At one point in time, meditation was believed to be a lot of new-aged “mumbo jumbo.” However, currently, the idea of meditation goes beyond focusing on something, internalizing the concept, and trying to refocus your body’s energy based upon your musings. It can indeed have scientifically proven benefits on your well-being.
Meditation comes in many different forms, and it is a scientifically proven way to help improve your physical health via caring for your mental health. Because there are no drawbacks or side effects to meditating, it is a valuable option for taking a proactive role in your health.
Today, meditation’s usefulness can be scientifically supported. Meditation offers proven benefits for both mind and body if practiced regularly and correctly. There are five primary scientific benefits to meditating.
Article Contents
Is There Any Science Behind Mediation?
While there IS science behind mediation, it is just becoming more reliable in recent years. Mediation has taken a while to “take on” because the medical studies surrounding the concept have often been poorly researched.
Another area where meditation has faced adversity is that doctors, practitioners, and scientists have often over-promised what meditation could realistically deliver.
Currently, there are still many things that are not known or understood concerning meditation. This even goes so far as medical professionals not agreeing to the word’s definition and precisely what it entails. Many people are still questioning “where does meditation come from?”
Regardless of what CAN’T be agreed upon by scientists and medical professionals, some benefits cannot be denied and seem accepted as the “norm” in terms of scientific advantages.
What Happens to the Brain During Meditation?
The answer to this question is very medically complex, and we will do our best to put it in understandable terms.
The brain benefits from repetition. When you do an activity over and over, you make and strengthen neurological connections and pathways.
Repeated meditation is thought to increase your brain’s gray matter, and that density in gray matter helps with retention. This, in turn, helps with attention and self-awareness.
Psychologist Kristopher Rhoads suggests that you should expect to see a change in your brain’s ability to function through meditating regularly over a 6 to 12 month period for 20-30 minutes per day.
Things that will eventually occur in your brain overtime include:
- Sharpened attention
- An increase your ability to become compassionate
Those are some pretty nice side effects of meditation! Plus, different types of meditation have their own benefits too!
Five Scientific Benefits to Meditation
Meditation is Proven to Reduce Stress
Meditation is Proven to Reduce StressA leader in medical research, The Mayo Clinic, has done a study that shows that meditation is a proven way to reduce stress in your life.
Through meditation as a stress-reliever, you are not subjecting your body to medication or chemicals, so it is a side-effect-free way to bring the stress in your life to a minimum.
By employing different types of breathwork when meditating to reduce stress, you can relieve up to even 30-78% more stress from your mind.
If your mind is not stressed, the odds are your body will not feel as stressed either. As anyone who suffers from stress is well aware, the physical effects can be detrimental to you in many ways. Some of those ways include:
- Low energy
- Headaches
- Insomnia
- Loss of sexual desire
Also, meditation practitioners are more apt to realize a stressful situation when it arises. They are better equipped to deal with it and keep it from consuming their minds as stressful situations are prone to do.
It should be a “no-brainer” to take on mediation as a way to relieve stress from your mind which will, in turn, reduce the physical effects of stress on your body.
Meditation is a Proven Way to Improve Sleep
Getting a good night’s rest is essential to your performance for the next day, the next week, and often beyond. While it might sound simple to get good sleep, it is not.
Insomnia is an ailment that makes the sufferer feel helpless and frustrated.
Chronic insomnia can make the sufferer feel mentally unstable. It can have long-lasting impacts on the suffer’s jobs and relationships, just to name a couple of the adverse effects it can have on their lives.
One out of four people suffers from a sleeping disorder, and 75% of those people have full-blown insomnia. People who have insomnia are more prone to:
- Strokes – these are often caused by the stress insomnia places on your body.
- Seizures – this is akin to the same information presented about strokes.
- Increased ability to feel pain
- Inflammation
- Weight Gain
- Diabetes
- Stress
- Anxiety
By properly practicing mediation, scientists have proven that you are more apt to have improved sleep. That improvement in sleep will have wide-reaching positive implications for you physically.
Mediation Is Proven to Help With Pain
Chronic physical pain is something from which over 50 million Americans suffer. This is a huge issue, as chronic pain tends to affect other areas of our lives.
The problem of chronic pain can even be shown to have proven economic implications, as well, as Americans lose over 80 billion dollars a year because they are in too much pain to go to work.
In a study does through Wake Forrest University, those who practiced meditation regularly reduced their chronic pain intensity by up to 40%. That is a HUGE reduction, especially for those dependent on pain medication to combat the issue.
Johns Hopkins University Assistant Professor Madhav Goyal, MD, MPH, says that “during meditation training, ‘one is actively taught how to observe what they’re feeling and then not react to it…It’s one way of training the mind to reduce one’s negative reaction.’”
While mediation doesn’t precisely take the pain AWAY from the sufferer, it DOES give them ways to better deal with the pain, thus reducing the need for medication and making them better able to function on a day-to-day basis.
For many people, meditation is well worth the effort to not rely on pain medication to help them with their daily functionality.
Mediation Is Proven to Help the Immune System
A study performed at the University of Wisconson – Maddison was conducted over two months between those who practiced meditation and those who did not.
Both groups of people were injected with a form of the flu. The ones who were regular meditational practitioners could stave off the illness better than those who did not.
It is believed that the relaxing effect of meditation can help to boost the body’s immune system, giving those who regularly meditate advantages when it comes to illness prevention.
This can save practitioners thousands of dollars or more in the long term because they will not miss as much work due to illness, and they are apt to be more productive because they feel better.
Meditation Can Help to Control Cravings
Our world today faces an overweight epidemic. The World Health Organization offers statistics in this area that are staggering.
13% of the adults in the world are considered to be obese. 39% of the world’s adults are overweight. One out of every five children is deemed to be overweight.
Many of the issues surrounding the weight problem that the world faces simply come down to our inability to overcome cravings. We allow ourselves to partake in whatever we feel like eating at the time, regardless of the effect on our health.
Meditation is proven to have a reduction in cravings. In a study published in the Journal of Behavior Medicine, people who participated in meditation for a minimum of 10 minutes per day for 28 days proved to reduce their cravings by a staggering 40%.
For those of us who battle the bulge daily, meditation seems like a sensible way to try to keep some of those unwanted pounds at bay…unless you are one of those people whose cravings tend to include carrots.
(With all the amazing benefits of it, you may want to try meditation as a student!)
How Long Should I Meditate Each Day?
As with any change you want to incorporate into your life, you do not want to jump into meditating hours at a time each day. You should ease your way into it, allowing it to become a part of your life more organically.
It is recommended that you start with meditating around five minutes a day, to begin with, and then gradually add on.
- The 5 minute period should be in effect for about one to two months.
- Seven to ten minutes per day for the next four months should be your goal.
- Twenty – 30 minutes per day should be your goal for the following six months.
- Forty minutes per day should be your optimal goal.
While there is no definitive answer as to how long one should meditate per day, The Melbourn Mindfulness Foundation suggests that working your way up to 40 minutes of meditation per day should produce optimal results.
The 40 minutes per day will allow for the build-up of that important gray matter we discussed earlier. Then you can begin to employ all of the benefits that accompany being a pro at meditation.
The benefits of mediation are vast, and the five scientific benefits mentioned herein are just the tip of the iceberg. Some hints for incorporating it into your life:
- Make it a habit. To make the most out of meditation, it is recommended that you add it to your traditional routine. Try to think of meditation in terms of hygiene. Just like you are not likely to go a day without taking a shower or brushing your teeth, you should not let a day pass without meditating.
- Start slow and build up. While you might try to jump into meditation with both feet, it is best first to dip your toe into the water. Start small with about five minutes per day. Do that for several months. Then add another small amount of time for a few more months.
Continue that process until you have added meditation as part of your daily routine for about 40 minutes to reach maximum benefits. Science has proven that the repetition of meditation will grow and strengthen the gray matter in your brain, and that will cause meditation to be more impactful in your life.
Meditate Your Way to Better Health
You should expect your mental health to benefit from meditation. In turn, your physical health should be helped, as well.
Response to meditation helps your mental health. Your physical health will reap the benefits. Eventually, you should expect your body to react to pain differently. Also, expect a change in overwhelming craving, promoting weight loss or maintenance.
You can also expect better sleep, a reduced chance for stroke, less inflammation, a reduced amount of stress you feel, and better-recognizing things that cause stress, and an anxiety reduction.
Meditation is a scientifically proven way to improve both your physical and mental health by introducing no harmful side effects into your life.
