Does Meditation Help to Keep Us Young?
Do people who meditate age more slowly? It seems unlikely on the face of it. How could sitting immobile with one's eyes closed, perhaps focusing on the breath, possibly keep the Grim Reaper at bay?
There is now a small but growing body of evidence that meditation really can slow ageing – at the cellular level. A commonly used proxy for cellular ageing is the length of telomeres, the DNA and protein caps that protect the ends of each chromosome during cell division. These shorten every time the chromosome replicates, until eventually the cell can no longer divide, undergoing "apoptosis" – the cellular equivalent of suicide. Having shorter telomeres in your cells is associated with the onset of many age-related diseases, including hypertension, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and dementia. Several lifestyle factors have been found to accelerate telomere shortening, such as poor diet, lack of sleep, smoking, drinking and a sedentary lifestyle.
Now a study by Spanish researchers suggests that highly experienced Zen meditators have longer telomeres on average than people of a similar age and lifestyle. The research also hints that the psychological factors underpinning this beneficial effect were that the meditators had a more compassionate, accepting outlook on life.
Scientists at the University of Zaragoza compared 20 people who had been practising Zen meditation for an hour or more a day for at least 10 years with 20 people who had never meditated, matched for age, sex and lifestyle factors such as diet, smoking, drinking and exercise. All of them were subjected to a battery of psychological tests and gave blood samples so that the length of telomeres in their immune cells could be measured.
When the researchers crunched the data they found that the meditators' telomeres were significantly longer than those of the controls, by an average of 10%. They then used a statistical technique called regression analysis to get an idea which factors might be directly responsible for this apparent slowing of cellular ageing. Many psychological traits were associated with having longer telomeres, including greater mindfulness skills, life satisfaction and subjective happiness. But the statistical analysis suggested that only younger age, low "experiential avoidance" and high self-compassion were directly responsible for longer telomeres.
Experiential avoidance is the natural tendency to suppress painful memories, thoughts, emotions and sensations in an effort to gain temporary relief from psychological discomfort. In fact, this mental shying away seems to cause greater problems for us in the long-run. By contrast, mindfulness – both in its original Buddhist context and in modern therapeutic programmes for treating conditions such as chronic pain, depression and drug addiction – involves turning one's attention towards unpleasant physical and mental experiences in a spirit of non-judgmental acceptance. So it's particularly interesting that the Spanish study found that experiential avoidance seemingly leads to faster shortening of telomeres.
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