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Meditation and Medicine...
have a gander at this.....
Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness.
Neuroreport. 2005; 16(17):1893-7 (ISSN: 0959-4965)
Lazar SW ; Kerr CE ; Wasserman RH ; Gray JR ; Greve DN ; Treadway MT ; McGarvey M ; Quinn BT ; Dusek JA ; Benson H ; Rauch SL ; Moore CI ; Fischl B
Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. lazar@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu
Previous research indicates that long-term meditation practice is associated with altered resting electroencephalogram patterns, suggestive of long lasting changes in brain activity. We hypothesized that meditation practice might also be associated with changes in the brain's physical structure. Magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess cortical thickness in 20 participants with extensive Insight meditation experience, which involves focused attention to internal experiences. Brain regions associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing were thicker in meditation participants than matched controls, including the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula. Between-group differences in prefrontal cortical thickness were most pronounced in older participants, suggesting that meditation might offset age-related cortical thinning. Finally, the thickness of two regions correlated with meditation experience. These data provide the first structural evidence for experience-dependent cortical plasticity associated with meditation practice.
Meditation May Physically Alter Brain
Salynn Boyles
WebMD Health News 2005. © 2005 WebMD Inc.
Nov. 15, 2005 -- Early research suggests that daily meditation can alter the physical structure of the brain and may even slow brain deterioration related to aging.
The study showed that parts of the brain known as the cerebral cortex were thicker in 20 people who meditated for as little as 40 minutes a day, compared with 15 people who did not meditate.
The region plays a critical role in decision making, working memory, and brain-body interactions, researcher Sara Lazar, PhD, tells WebMD.
Lazar is a research scientist at Harvard Medical School's Massachusetts General Hospital. She presented the study at Neuroscience 2005, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. It also appears in the latest issue of the journal NeuroReport.
Western-Style Meditation
The findings are not the first to suggest that meditation can change the way the brain works and that this change can be measured through brain imaging. Recent studies involving Buddhist monks in Tibet suggest that meditation alters key electrical impulses within the brain.
But the monks in the study had devoted their lives to the practice of meditation. The 20 people who meditated in the latest research did so for an average of about six hours a week, with some meditating for as little as four hours weekly.
"Our findings provide the first evidence that alterations in brain structure are associated with Western-style meditation practice, possibly reflecting increased use of specific brain regions," Lazar says.
Specifically, brain regions associated with attention, sensory processing, and sensitivity to stimulation originating within the body were thicker in the meditators. There was also some suggestion that meditation may protect against age-related thinning of this specific region of the brain.
"We are talking about a small but important region involved in working memory, which has been shown to decrease rapidly during aging," Lazar says.
Dalai Lama Weighs In
The study is one of several exploring the potential impact of meditation on the brain presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting. The topic was widely covered by the media, thanks to the presence of the Dalai Lama at the meeting.
In a speech to the group on Saturday, the Tibetan spiritual and political leader told the gathered neuroscientists that they should increase their efforts to understand how meditation and similar practices affect brain activity.
The question is getting a lot of attention from the media, but Harvard Medical School professor of psychology Stephen Kosslyn, PhD, tells WebMD that the hype is getting ahead of the science.
Kosslyn moderated a seminar in which the new studies on meditation and brain activity were presented.
"These studies show that it is possible to do science on this topic, but it is much too early to conclude anything at all from them," he says.
SOURCES: Neuroscience 2005, annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Washington, Nov. 12-16, 2005. NeuroReport, online edition. Sara W. Lazar, PhD, Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital; department of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston. Stephen Kosslyn, PhD, professor of psychology, Harvard Medical School, Boston. "Dalai Lama Gives Talk on Science," Washington Post, Nov. 13, 2005.
Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness.
Neuroreport. 2005; 16(17):1893-7 (ISSN: 0959-4965)
Lazar SW ; Kerr CE ; Wasserman RH ; Gray JR ; Greve DN ; Treadway MT ; McGarvey M ; Quinn BT ; Dusek JA ; Benson H ; Rauch SL ; Moore CI ; Fischl B
Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. lazar@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu
Previous research indicates that long-term meditation practice is associated with altered resting electroencephalogram patterns, suggestive of long lasting changes in brain activity. We hypothesized that meditation practice might also be associated with changes in the brain's physical structure. Magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess cortical thickness in 20 participants with extensive Insight meditation experience, which involves focused attention to internal experiences. Brain regions associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing were thicker in meditation participants than matched controls, including the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula. Between-group differences in prefrontal cortical thickness were most pronounced in older participants, suggesting that meditation might offset age-related cortical thinning. Finally, the thickness of two regions correlated with meditation experience. These data provide the first structural evidence for experience-dependent cortical plasticity associated with meditation practice.
Meditation May Physically Alter Brain
Salynn Boyles
WebMD Health News 2005. © 2005 WebMD Inc.
Nov. 15, 2005 -- Early research suggests that daily meditation can alter the physical structure of the brain and may even slow brain deterioration related to aging.
The study showed that parts of the brain known as the cerebral cortex were thicker in 20 people who meditated for as little as 40 minutes a day, compared with 15 people who did not meditate.
The region plays a critical role in decision making, working memory, and brain-body interactions, researcher Sara Lazar, PhD, tells WebMD.
Lazar is a research scientist at Harvard Medical School's Massachusetts General Hospital. She presented the study at Neuroscience 2005, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. It also appears in the latest issue of the journal NeuroReport.
Western-Style Meditation
The findings are not the first to suggest that meditation can change the way the brain works and that this change can be measured through brain imaging. Recent studies involving Buddhist monks in Tibet suggest that meditation alters key electrical impulses within the brain.
But the monks in the study had devoted their lives to the practice of meditation. The 20 people who meditated in the latest research did so for an average of about six hours a week, with some meditating for as little as four hours weekly.
"Our findings provide the first evidence that alterations in brain structure are associated with Western-style meditation practice, possibly reflecting increased use of specific brain regions," Lazar says.
Specifically, brain regions associated with attention, sensory processing, and sensitivity to stimulation originating within the body were thicker in the meditators. There was also some suggestion that meditation may protect against age-related thinning of this specific region of the brain.
"We are talking about a small but important region involved in working memory, which has been shown to decrease rapidly during aging," Lazar says.
Dalai Lama Weighs In
The study is one of several exploring the potential impact of meditation on the brain presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting. The topic was widely covered by the media, thanks to the presence of the Dalai Lama at the meeting.
In a speech to the group on Saturday, the Tibetan spiritual and political leader told the gathered neuroscientists that they should increase their efforts to understand how meditation and similar practices affect brain activity.
The question is getting a lot of attention from the media, but Harvard Medical School professor of psychology Stephen Kosslyn, PhD, tells WebMD that the hype is getting ahead of the science.
Kosslyn moderated a seminar in which the new studies on meditation and brain activity were presented.
"These studies show that it is possible to do science on this topic, but it is much too early to conclude anything at all from them," he says.
SOURCES: Neuroscience 2005, annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Washington, Nov. 12-16, 2005. NeuroReport, online edition. Sara W. Lazar, PhD, Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital; department of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston. Stephen Kosslyn, PhD, professor of psychology, Harvard Medical School, Boston. "Dalai Lama Gives Talk on Science," Washington Post, Nov. 13, 2005.
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Forsch Komplementarmed Klass Naturheilkd. 2005; 12(2):107-12 (ISSN: 1424-7364)
Van Wijk EP ; Ackerman J ; Van Wijk R
International Institute of Biophysics, Neuss, Germany.
BACKGROUND: Various physiologic and biochemical shifts can follow meditation. Meditation has been implicated in impacting free radical activity. Ultraweak photon emission (UPE, biophoton emission) is a constituent of the metabolic processes in a living system. Spectral analysis showed the characteristics of radical reactions. OBJECTIVES: Recording and analysing photon emission in 5 subjects before, during and after meditation. METHODS: UPE in 5 subjects who meditated in sitting or supine positions was recorded in a darkroom utilising a photomultiplier designed for manipulation in three directions. RESULTS: Data indicated that UPE changes after meditation. In 1 subject with high pre-meditation values, UPE decreased during meditation and remained low in the postmeditation phase. In the other subjects, only a slight decrease in photon emission was found, but commonly a decrease was observed in the kurtosis and skewness values of the photon count distribution. A second set of data on photon emission from the hands before and after meditation was collected from 2 subjects. These data were characterised by the Fano factor, F(T), i.e. variance over mean of the number of photoelectrons observed within observation time T. All data were compared to surrogate data sets which were constructed by random shuffling of the data sets. In the pre-meditation period, F(T) increased with observation time, significantly at time windows >6 s. No such effect was found after meditation, when F(T) was in the range of the surrogate data set. CONCLUSIONS: The data support the hypothesis that human photon emission can be influenced by meditation. Data from time series recordings suggest that this non-invasive tool for monitoring radical reactions during meditation is useful to characterise the effect of meditation. Fano factor analysis demonstrated that the time series before meditation do not represent a simple Poisson process. Instead, UPE has characteristics of a fractal process, showing long-range correlations. The effect of meditation waives out this coherence phenomenon, suggesting a weaker and less ordered structure of UPE. In general, meditation seems to influence the complex interactions of oxidative and anti-oxidative reactions which regulate photon emission. The reason for the statistical changes between pre- and post-meditation measurements remains unclear and demands further examination.
PreMedline Identifier: 16086532
:rockon:
My doctor was the one who first told me about this. New studies are also showing degeneration of the brain in people who suffer from chronic pain. So my doctor was quite insistent that more regularly meditation sessions was very important for me. We also go on and on about Buddhism during my appointments. He loves it. I think he's Jewish by birth. We have the greatest conversations and he also acts as a counselor to me as well as being my regular doctor. He's the one that found the meds. that have helped me so much, the one's I never go a day without being grateful for. He's one of the few truly great doctors I've ever met. I had to fire my last one.
Brigid
Brigid...you are very lucky to have found such a wonderful doctor! I use a Midwife for all of my "female" stuff, and she is fantastic, but I have yet to find a doctor like the one you have found. That's wonderful.
I'm so glad you have a midwife! More power to midwifery!! I have 2 friends who were studying to become midwives. I haven't seen them in years, so I don't know if they made it, but I hope they did.
Brigid
Hello,
@##$$@# off. You'd think they being doctors (GP's) you would actually care about people. I mean their NOT surgeons preforming brain surgery!! What's happening to "caring/listening" in the health care system??? As professionals are we (they) so immune to caring???? I can sympathise that they do have busy periods, but hey don't patients generally deserve the GP's respect....Thats it!!!!! Should I be screaming, "I'm a Buddhist, I care and I respect you!!" Maybe a T-shirt.......Oh, help!!! I need help!!!!:werr: :crazy:
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in............
SEE? This is exactly what I mean about doctors who do harm.
Esau,
I know precisely what you mean. He sounds like a burn out case with too large a patient load. And the damage he does to every patient he's supposed to be treating is immeasurable. He needs to be set straight or get out of the job. It's a massive responsibility and if he's unable to handle it he needs to get a lab job. It's just far too dangerous.
We put our lives in the hands of our doctors. Literally. (I NEVER use that word.) That is a huge amount of trust we're giving them. To betray that trust is very, very bad.
Esau, I hope you can find another doctor. You gotta have one you can count on. I may be naive but I think there are more good doctors than bad ones, to use simple terminology. So keep your chin up. Your next one may be a compassionate genius! LOL!
Be well.
Brigid
So the dingbat poles up at our house, waltzes in and says "Well Mrs L. your daughter thinks you've gone looney, is she right?"
But I did have a wonderfully spiritual doctor in Brittany - into alternative medecine, always treated the whole patient, not just the symptoms, brilliant guy and one of my best students ... one of my more blessed experiences.
LOL!!! Oh yes, another big pet peeve of mine. Companies that make diet pills, etc thrive on the people that are just looking for an easy way out.
I've known a number of people that have been able to overcome this disorder by simply using liquor.
-bf
Plus, if you were to die, we know that you can't "dust vomit".
-bf
It's kind of a hall of mirrors: many times patients have to show being actively involved in the management of their illnesses by knowing the names of their medications, asking docs about what the side effects are BUT docs also have to show patients that they are actively involved in listening to them as individuals. It's a two way street.
Perhaps those of you who have had trouble connecting with docs should consider employing gentle tactics to get the doc's attention by showing involvement in the management of the condition. Some possibilities may be:
I know we've discussed X before but now I'm wondering what I can do to manage X better myself?
What is this medication for? What does the research show it does for my problem?
And most importantly: if the doc says something you don't understand, say "I don't know what that means". Gently ask if s/he can explain it using a metaphor. I am so often annoyed at docs who give the 'brush off' answer because they think patients can not understand the underlying mechanism of an illness or a treatment. In fact, it's not that difficult. Many docs can explain the most complex of processes to anyone, if they can focus on being present.
I guess I'm advocating communication with docs as a place of practice. Why not?
Peace
once upon a time, when Doctors had specific, tangible illnesses to treat, life was, in a way, simpler. They knew what they were dealing with. Now, with the availability of vaccines, and with improved diet, hygiene and living conditions, those illnesses are largely a thing of the past.... but they have been replaced with far more troublesome conditions - because many of these conditions are stress-related, or psychological.... that's not to say that everyone is going mental, but illnesses are more mind- than body-related, by and large.
And these ailments are far more difficult to tackle, because everyone is different, and no two conditions are the same. Doctors today are having to train in a very different sphere to the one their predecessors did...
They need far more imput from their patients now, than ever before... and as patients, it is our duty to co-operate, and to not put all of the responsibility onto their shoulders. It's our Body and Mind. We should be held liable for what goes on in it, and supply everything we possibly can to help things along.... the doctor needs the information, but it's up to us to maintain the communication.
Information is about "Giving Out".... Communication is about "Getting through"....
"No one can live my life but me. No one can live your life but you. I am responsible. You are responsible."
I agree with your post that as patients we are responsible. We are responsible for ourselves, our health, our lives. But it is complicated. We are not always responsible for our illnesses. Sometimes illness "just happens" to us. We are not at fault.
The reason I entitled my previous post as "Docs as practice?" is that many times getting a doc to listen to ME, to pay attention to ME as an individual, can be difficult. It takes many tries. In fact, it is as much a source of practice as attending to one's own breath. When I made suggestions about how to ask docs questions that might jolt them out of their otherwise normal routines, what I mean to get across is primarily that as "patients" we have to find ways to break out of "being a patient" into "being a person with an illness".
Some of the most interesting times I've seen patients transform themselves from patients into people is by showing interest in some routine aspect of something. For example, one patient started asking the nurse how to weigh herself. This seemingly simple act really started to transform the nurse's perception of her as a patient and started a new phase of that woman's life not as a "patient" but as a person with a medical problem. She started treating the nurse differently, the nurse started treating her differently, and that "sense of newness" also transformed the woman's relationship to her doctor as well. It was really cool.
What I mean to get across is not just "here are some questions to ask" but to encourage people who are unhappy with their docs to engage with them in non-routine ways. Give them a Buddhist whack on the head to get them out of their routines that blind them to the people right in front of them.
Sorry it took me a while to figure out what I was trying to say. Sometimes I have something I want to say but it takes a while to get it across clearly.
Peace
A friend of mine who is a GP admitted that it is easy to fall into the "talking at" his patients because so many who come into his surgery are totally passive, they present the problem, expect him to solve it and seem to take no active part in the healing process.
So when he comes across someone who is interested and sees this as a partnership, he is taken aback. He's so used to just making a diagnosis, handing over the prescription and waving goodbye that it might take him a moment or two to adjust.
Knitwitch, you are right...when a doctor sees me and my husband asking a million questions, and talking about things that we can do besides just medication, they are usually caught off guard, but I think they appreciate it. Especially when it comes to our daughter and vaccinations. When we tell them "No, you are not giving our daughter that shot. We need one that is thimerosol free", they look at us like we are looney!