With the growing evidence that training the mind or inducing certain modes of consciousness can have positive effects on health, researchers have tried to understand how these practices physically affect the body. A new study by researchers from Wisconsin, Spain and France reports the first evidence of specific molecular changes in the body after a period of intensive mindfulness practice (also known as Mindfulness or Mindfulness).
The study investigated the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a control group of untrained subjects who practiced quiet non-meditative activities. After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences, including altered levels of gene regulation machinery and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with recovery. faster physics after a stressful situation.
"To our knowledge, this is the first work that shows rapid alterations in the genetic expression of subjects associated with the practice of mindfulness meditation, " says study author Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Research of Healthy Minds and Professor of psychology and psychiatry at William James and Vilas, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"The most interesting thing is that the changes were observed in the genes that are the current targets of anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs, " says Perla Kaliman, the first author of the article and researcher at the Biomedical Research Institute of Barcelona, Spain (IIBB-CSIC -IDIBAPS), where the molecular analyzes were carried out.
The study was published in the Psychoneuroendocrinology Newspaper.
Mindfulness-based workouts have demonstrated beneficial effects on inflammatory diseases in previous clinical studies and are endorsed by the American Heart Association as a preventive intervention. The new results provide a possible biological mechanism for therapeutic effects.
Genetic activity may change according to perception.
According to Dr. Bruce Lipton, genetic activity can change daily. If the perception in your mind is reflected by the chemistry of your body, and if your nervous system reads and interprets the environment and then controls the chemistry of the blood, then you can literally change the fate of the cells by altering your thoughts. .
In fact, Dr. Lipton's research illustrates that by changing your perception, your mind can alter the activity of your genes and create more than thirty thousand product variations for each gene. He gives more details by saying that genetic programs are contained within the cell nucleus, and you can rewrite those genetic programs by changing the chemistry of your blood.
In the simplest terms, this means that we have to change our thinking if we want to cure cancer. " The function of the mind is to create coherence between our beliefs and the reality we experience, " said Dr. Lipton. “What this means is that your mind will adjust the biology and behavior of your body to fit your beliefs. If you have been told that you are going to die in six months, and your mind believes it, it is very likely that you will die in six months. This is called the nocebo effect, the result of a negative thought, which is the opposite of the placebo effect, where health is mediated by positive thinking.
This dynamic points to a three-part system: there is the part of you that swears that it does not want to die (the conscious mind), invented by the part of you that thinks it does (the prognosis) of the physician mediated by the subconscious mind), which then sets in motion the chemical reaction (mediated by the chemistry of the brain) to ensure that the body adapts to the dominant belief . (Neuroscience has recognized that the subconscious controls 95% of our lives.)
Now what happens to the part that does not want to die the conscious mind? Isn't it affecting the chemistry of the body too? Dr. Lipton said it all comes down to how the subconscious mind has been programmed, which contains our deepest beliefs. It is these beliefs that ultimately make the decisive vote .
"It's a complex situation, " said Dr. Lipton. People have been programmed to believe that they are victims and that they have no control. We are programmed from the beginning with the beliefs of our mothers and fathers. So, for example, when we get sick, our parents told us that we have to go to the doctor because the doctor is the authority regarding our health. We all received the message throughout childhood that doctors were the health authority and that we were victims of bodily forces beyond our ability to control. The joke, however, is that people often improved when they went to the doctor. That was when the innate capacity for self-healing goes into action, another example of the placebo effect.
Mindfulness practice specifically affects regulatory pathways
The results of Davidson's study show a downward regulation of genes that have been implicated in inflammation. Affected genes include the pro-inflammatory genes RIPK2 and COX2, as well as several histone deacetylase (HDAC) genes, which epigenetically regulate the activity of other genes by removing a type of chemical label. What is more, the extent to which some of these genes were regulated down was associated with the faster recovery of cortisol before a social stress test involving impromptu speech and tasks that require mental calculations performed in front of an audience and a video camera.
Biologists have suspected for years that some type of epigenetic inheritance occurs at the cellular level. The different types of cells in our body are an example. Skin cells and brain cells have different forms and functions, despite having exactly the same DNA. There must be mechanisms - other than DNA - that ensure that skin cells remain skin cells when they divide.
It may be surprising, say the researchers, that there were no differences in the genes tested between the two groups of people at the start of the study. The observed effects were seen only in the meditators after the practice of mindfulness. In addition, several other DNA modifying genes showed no differences between the groups, suggesting that the practice of mindfulness has specifically affected certain regulatory pathways.
The key result is that the meditators experienced genetic changes after the practice of mindfulness that were not observed in the group that did not meditate, after other silent activities - a result that provides proof of the principle that mindfulness practice can lead to alterations. epigenetic genome.
Previous studies in rodents and in people have shown dynamic epigenetic responses to physical stimuli such as stress, diet or exercise in a few hours only.
"Our genes are very dynamic in their expression and these results suggest that the tranquility of our mind can really exert a potential influence on its expression, " says Davidson.
"The regulation of HDACs and inflammatory pathways may represent some of the mechanisms that underlie the therapeutic potential of mindfulness-based interventions, " says Kaliman. "Our results establish the basis for future studies to further evaluate meditation strategies for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases."
Subconscious beliefs are the key
Too many positive thinkers know that thinking good thoughts - and reciting statements for hours and hours - does not always bring the results promised by books to feel good.
Dr. Lipton did not discuss this point, because positive thoughts come from the conscious mind, while contradictory negative thoughts are usually programmed into the subconscious, more powerful mind.
“The main problem is that people are aware of their beliefs and conscious behaviors, but not of subconscious beliefs and behaviors. Most people do not even recognize that their subconscious mind comes into play, when the truth is that the subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind and that we operate 95% to 99% of our lives from programs. subconscious. ”
“Your subconscious beliefs are working either for you or against you, but the truth is that you are not controlling your life, because your subconscious mind replaces any conscious control. So when you are trying to recover from a conscious level - citing statements and telling yourself that you are healthy - there may be an invisible subconscious program that is sabotaging you. ”
The power of the subconscious mind is elegantly revealed in people who express multiple personalities. While occupying the mentality of a personality, the individual can be very allergic to strawberries. Then, when experiencing the mentality of another personality, he or she eats them without consequences.
The new science of epigenetics promises that every person on the planet has the opportunity to become what they really are, with unimaginable power and the ability to operate from, and go to, the highest possibilities, including the healing of our bodies and our culture, and live in peace.
Source: http://antediluviana.blogspot.com.es/
Scientists show how thoughts cause molecular changes in your genes
