Meditation and ageing (part 2)

What’s more, research has also shown that it’s possible to slow the loss of our brain cells. Normally, we lose about 10,000 brain cells a day. That may sound horrible, but we were born with 1.1 trillion. We also have several thousand born each day, mainly in the hippocampus, in what’s called neurogenesis. So losing 10,000 a day isn’t that big a deal, but the net bottom line is that a typical 80 year old will have lost about 4 percent of his or her brain mass—it’s called “cortical thinning with aging.” It’s a normal process.

But in one study, researchers compared meditators and non-meditators. In the graph to the left, the meditators are the blue circles and the non-meditators are the red squares, comparing people of the same age. The non-meditators experienced normal cortical thinning in those two brain regions I mentioned above, along with a third, the somatosensory cortex.

However, the people who routinely meditated and “worked” their brain did not experience cortical thinning in those regions.

How to delay ageing and age more gracefully (pathways to longevity)

On my internet wandering, i found something to important to not tell everyone. As it was researched in Shamatha Study, a longitudinal research about different meditation techniques, mostly based on the Buddhist tradition, one side note made me look for more. Intensive 3 months retreat and meditation had a fascinating effect. What was that, you will ask? They discovered that meditating longer periods every day, resulted in a 39% increase in telomerase activity, telomeres being that DNA protein complexes related to ageing. So, to say it bluntly, meditation will slow the ageing process, or even stop it, if it is done for longer periods of time. Of course, meditation alone will do a lot to help, but you can also increase your chances with a regular sleeping pattern and a healthy diet. You may not realise, but 39% is huge, it is like adding 33 years to a normal 85 years lifespan. What can you do with all this time? I let you dream for a while.

After that you can check the other post i just did with samples of guided meditation.
Good luck!
G.