Can Meditation Change Our DNA?
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
It seems like meditation is on everyone’s mind these days, and there’s good reason. This ancient practice can help manage the ups and downs of life, it can help us stay calm when the waves seem unsurmountable, and give us greater perspective during challenging times.
Benefits of meditation
Here is a quick list of meditation benefits that are well documented:
Counteracts the harmful effects of stress
Dampens the sensation of pain
Benefits our sleep
Improves focus and concentration
Lowers blood pressure
Slows heart rate and breathing rate
Develops resilience and a more positive mindset
Reduces feelings of depression and anxiety
The benefits keep adding up, to the point that it seems almost magical that the act of sitting in silence can have so many positive effects!
Meditation is nothing new. Exactly when humans started meditating is unclear, but at a minimum, we have been doing it for a few thousand years.
Whereas in the past the focus was perhaps more on spiritual enlightenment, we now know that the benefits of meditation encompass not only the mental-emotional, but the physical plane as well.
In recent history, there has been a wider attraction to the practice, and in particular a special interest in the physical benefits of meditation.
Ways to meditate
There are many different ways to meditate.
At the most basic level it involves focusing on something, such as the breath, while sitting in silence and “observing” one’s thoughts.
Using the method of Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM), the person repeats three phrases as a point of focus: may I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be at peace.
This is later repeated with another person in mind, visualizing them and wishing them well: may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be at peace. Another type of meditation, known as Mantra Meditation, involves the repetition of a word or sound to bring about a state of relaxation
For some people, sitting in silence is difficult, but many experts in the field of mindfulness and meditation suggest this indicates a greater need to train the mind to focus.
There are moving meditations such as yoga and qi gong that can also create some of the benefits achieved through meditation.
These types of practices involve focusing the mind on the breath and cultivate the mental training that meditation seeks to develop.
Can meditation reverse aging?
Can these “simple” meditation practices really cause a biological change at a cellular level?
Some studies say yes and some are unclear. The ones that say yes suggest that meditation can cause cellular changes and reverse the effects of aging.
One way to detect this is to measure the length of our telomeres. Telomeres are sections of DNA at the ends of our chromosomes that become shorter as the cell divides.
Telomeres protect our chromosomes by preventing the loss of important genetic material with each cell division. Instead of losing part of the chromosome, we lose a part of the telomere.
With the passage of time and as we age, a cell will divide multiple times until it’s telomeres are “shortened down” to a point where the cell cannot divide anymore and it dies. A common analogy used to explain telomeres is the shoelace. Shoelaces have plastic end caps that prevent the shoelace from fraying.
Our chromosomes have similar “ends” called telomeres. The older we are, the more stress we have been exposed to, the more chronic disease we have, the shorter our telomeres. In other words, long telomeres are an indication of health and vitality.
As this is a relatively new field of study, there is still more information we need to uncover. For example, how exactly does meditation affect telomere length?
The process is not fully understood, but it appears that meditation helps to decrease inflammation, which in turn protects telomeres, helping them “regenerate” so to speak. This is significant because inflammation is at the root cause of many chronic illnesses.
However, not all investigations show a clear correlation between telomere length and meditation. In some studies, the people who meditated also engaged in other life-style habits that affected telomeres in a positive way.
Doing regular physical activity, as well as having a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, and free from processed foods, can help prevent the degradation of telomeres. In these investigations it is not clear if the diet affected the telomeres or the meditation.
Some studies suggest that perhaps the methods used for measuring the length of telomeres is not ideal. Different studies use different forms of meditation, so the results cannot be applied universally to all types of meditation practices.
Ultimately, we need more good quality studies to try and isolate the power of meditation on a cellular level. We need to determine exactly what factors influence our DNA and telomere length. Is it the type of meditation that is practiced? Is there a minimum amount of time that meditation must be practiced for in order to see results?
In the meantime, consider using an app or finding a guided meditation online you can follow. Think of it as an experiment. Try meditation for 21 days and see how you feel. You won’t be able to measure changes in your cells, but there might just be a shift to a more focused, balanced and peaceful you.
References
Differential Effects of Focused Attention and Open Monitoring Meditation on Autonomic Cardiac Modulation and Cortisol Secretion (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8320390/)
The effects of meditation on length of telomeres in healthy individuals: a systematic review (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8139075/)
Impact of Meditation-Based Lifestyle Practices on Mindfulness, Wellbeing, and Plasma Telomerase Levels: A Case-Control Study
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8931770/)
Impact of Yoga and Meditation on Cellular Aging in Apparently Healthy Individuals: A Prospective, Open-Label Single-Arm Exploratory Study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5278216/)
Meditation, stress processes, and telomere biology (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6526075/)
Meditation and telomere length: a meta-analysis
(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31903785/)
Meditation & yoga: Impact on oxidative DNA damage & dysregulated sperm transcripts in male partners of couples with recurrent pregnancy loss
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6469372/)
The Relevance of Complementary and Integrative Medicine in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Review of the Literature (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7761649/)
Telomere length correlates with subtelomeric DNA methylation in long-term mindfulness practitioners
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7067861/)
What Is the Molecular Signature of Mind–Body Interventions? A Systematic Review of Gene Expression Changes Induced by Meditation and Related Practices
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5472657/)