Meditation simply means training the mind and studies suggest that it enhances health by:
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Improving immune function to help fight infection.
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Optimizing the level of the enzyme telomerase, which repairs and maintains the ends of your chromosomes, keeping your cells— and therefore you—youthful, functioning well, and healthy.
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Enhancing the “epigenetic” regulation of genes to help prevent life threatening inflammation.
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Modifying cardiovascular factors, improving cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and heart function.
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Increasing neural integration in the brain, enabling more coordination and balance in both the functional and structural connectivity within the nervous system that facilitates optimal functioning, including self-regulation, problem solving, and adaptive behavior that is at the heart of well-being.
If these five physiological improvements with mind-training were not enough to catch your attention, how about this sixth finding: increased growth of integrative function and structure in the brain, the linking of differentiated regions as measured by changes in the hippocampus, corpus callosum, prefrontal cortex and the whole-brain connectome: Neural integration is the underlying foundation for resilience and optimal regulation.
— Dr Dan Siegel