How Meditation And Yoga Can Alter The Expression Of Our Genes
For those who are still skeptical about whether mind-body practices
like meditation and yoga actually work, a new study goes further
in laying out how they affect us — right down to the level of our genes.
The new review, published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology,
looks back over a number of previous studies on the effects
of the different practices on gene expression.
It turns out that the practices all seem to have a beneficial
effect on the expression of a slew of different genes.
And, as you might expect, the affected genes are generally
those involved in stress and inflammation.
The team searched for studies that measured the effects of
mind-body interventions including mindfulness, meditation, yoga,
the relaxation response, Tai Chi and Qigong on gene expression.
Out of hundreds of studies, only 18 met all the criteria
for the current analysis.
It turns out that all of the practices had some sort of
effect on gene expression, either increasing or decreasing
the expression of individual genes that were most often related to
stress and inflammation.
The compound that's activated during times of stress and
controls the expression of inflammation-related genes was
reduced across multiple studies.
Across all the different practices, gene expression generally changed
in the direction of reducing the stress and inflammatory responses,
which, in terms of long-term health, is generally a good thing.
Millions of people around the world already enjoy the health benefits
of mind-body interventions like yoga or meditation, but what they
perhaps don’t realise is that these benefits begin at a molecular level
and can change the way our genetic code goes about its business.
These activities are leaving what we call a molecular signature
in our cells, which reverses the effect that stress or anxiety
would have on the body by changing how our genes are expressed.
Put simply, [mind-body interventions] cause the brain to steer our DNA
processes along a path which improves our wellbeing.
This isn’t the first study to suggest that these practices
alter our immune systems.
Richard Davidson, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Jon Kabat-Zinn,
founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) at UMass,
showed that people’s immune systems responded better to the flu vaccine
after people did an eight-week course of meditation.
More recent work has generally confirmed the connection.
But what was interesting about the current study was that the
inflammatory benefits seem to stretch across different methods,
from MBSR to yoga to pranayama.
Scientists won’t rest until they suss out exactly how
these practices do what they do – but since we already know
that they do a lot of good – and have for thousands of years –
feel free to give whichever one calls out to you a try.
And the good news is that, as people have long suspected and
as science is starting to confirm, they all seem to have benefits
that are measurable and, very likely, lasting.
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