Mindfulness meditation, the practice of paying more attention to the present moment, helps lower stress hormones and decreases inflammation in the body, scientists have proven for the first time

The training has been growing in popularity in recent years, with the NHS recommends mindfulness as a way to reduce stress and anxiety. Studies have shown that mindfulness can decrease self-reported stress levels and make people feel calmer, but until now it was unknown if it was having a biological impact on the body. Now scientists have shown that an eight week course of mindfulness, involving daily classes can help lower inflammatory molecules and stress hormones by around 15%. The therapy was shown to work better than non-meditation stress management course. “Mindfulness meditation training is a relatively inexpensive and low-stigma treatment approach, and these findings strengthen the case that it can improve resilience to stress,” said lead author Dr Elizabeth Hoge, associate professor in Georgetown University Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry. “The study adds to evidence for the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation in treating anxiety.” The study included 89 patients with anxiety disorder, a condition if chronic and excessive worrying which is thought to affect around three million people in Britain. The participants were divided into two groups, with one taking an eight-week mindfulness course and the other taking a stress management course over the same period. Before and after the training course, participants underwent the Trier Social Stress Test, a standard technique for inducing a stress response, in which the participants are asked at short notice to give a speech before an audience, and are given other anxiety-inducing instructions. “We were testing the patients’ resilience because that’s really the ultimate question—can we make people handle stress better?" added Dr Hoge. During the stress test, the team monitored blood-based markers of subjects’ stress responses, including levels of the stress hormone cortisol and the inflammatory proteins IL-6 and TNF-α, which usually ramp up when the body is fighting illness. The control group who took the stress management course showed a modest rise in markers on the second test compared to the first, suggesting a worsening of their anxiety from having to endure the test again. By contrast, the meditation group showed big drops in these markers on the second test, suggesting that the meditation training had helped them cope. The team also found that the meditation group patients, compared to controls, experienced significantly greater reductions in self-reported measures of stress after their course. Hoge now wants to test whether mindfulness-related treatments can help other psychiatric conditions, and to compare treatments to standard psychiatric drug therapies.

Practicing transcendental meditation technique for 20 minutes twice a day can significantly reduce trauma symptoms such as unwanted thoughts and help female prisoners find inner peace, a study has found

Transcendental meditation is a technique for detaching oneself from anxiety and promoting harmony and self-realization by meditation, repetition of a mantra, and other yogic practices. The results showed that after four months of practicing the meditation technique, the women inmates had significant reductions in total trauma symptoms, including intrusive thoughts and hyperarousal. They also felt less stressed and experienced a greater sense of inner freedom and resilience, the researchers said. "The study shows a natural and effortless alternative approach to reducing trauma symptoms in women's mental health," said lead author Sanford Nidich, Director of the Center for Social and Emotional Health at Maharishi University of Management in Iowa. Practising the meditation technique allows the mind to transcend to quieter levels and has very specific effects on the body - effects that are the opposite of the body's hyperaroused state known as the flight-or-fight response. The system involved in this arousal, known as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, is significantly decreased in its activity, thus helping people not to get affected by stress. Apart from acting as a stress management tool, the meditation technique can also provide other benefits such as reduced recidivism to improved cardiovascular health, the researchers stated. For the study, the team encouraged prison inmates to practice transcendental meditation individually in their prison cells twice daily and encouraged them to attend 30-40 minutes group meditation sessions, supervised by a teacher, twice a week over the four-month study period. The participants reported that transcendental meditation helped them reduce their obsessive-compulsive behavior, social introversion, anxiety and neuroticism as well as rates of recidivism and increased positive social relations and improved sleep.