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Study suggests daily meditation slows brain aging
- droopyEyelids 7y agoHere is the actual study. https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/13554794.2020.1731553 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/13554794.2020.1731553 Note this is only a study of one individual.
- twomoretime 7y agoI'm waiting for a study which evaluates activation of the glymphatic[0] system during meditation. Any day now... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system
- sova 7y agoAmazingly, the cleansing system is triggered in bees via interaction with mushrooms. (Cytochrome P450). Here's an interesting article with Paul Stamets explaining: https://modernfarmer.com/2016/04/can-mushrooms-save-honeybee-food-supply/ https://modernfarmer.com/2016/04/can-mushrooms-save-honeybee...
- eternauta3k 7y agoYes. This is critical so we can know whether those Thai monks who sleep 3-4 hours a night are wrecking their brain. Or if their long meditation sessions can make up for the lost sleep.
- throw1234651234 7y agoUnfortunately there is no take away without further research. Is the threshold meditating 20 mins a day, 2 hours, 8 hours? Is it gradual? Is he an outlier? Is it related to sitting around in nature and doing nothing all day?
- sova 7y agotry and see. if your clocks tick slower it's working.
- throw1234651234 7y agoI have been meditating for over a decade now. Started when I messed with lucid dreaming as a teenager. I am still unconvinced there is any benefit to it whatsoever, at least to a person who otherwise focuses on their work for large periods of time. Kelly McGonigal from Stanford or Harvard argues that it increases willpower, but so does just doing things. There was a study showing Transcendental meditation decreases blood pressure, but Transcendental meditation is a gimmick and the study was funded by the people pushing the system, etc. All the Harvard studies about core temperature increases show that the monks are actively contracting their muscles to achieve the effect. Same story with slowing down heart-rate. Neither of which ever achieves out-of-norm ranges.
- durkie 7y agowhy do you keep doing it if you see no benefit whatsoever?
- throw1234651234 7y agoHelps me fall asleep fast. But so does running through the relaxing individual body parts exercise. Maybe out of paranoia that I am missing something and I only do it for 10 minutes a day. Oh, and good ideas come to me while I am trying not to focus on anything. Almost like the mind is trying to find an excuse to break single-point attention. edit: Also, meditation traditions are found all over the world - for example a Christian mystic, Teresa of Avila meditated all the time. edit 2 in reply to below: Sure, semantics, but you are definitely right to some degree. The difference is that the mechanism behind relaxation is clear.
- nicoburns 7y ago> so does running through the relaxing individual body parts exercise Isn't that a form of meditation too?
- proverbialbunny 7y agoEnough until there is nothing left but the present moment. (One step at a time ofc.)
- lostmsu 7y agoThis study has a very low sample size and a very large error interval due to the method (guesstimating age from brain scans using CV)
- cptaj 7y agoMy thoughts exactly. Also, it hardly establishes any causation between meditation and reduced brain aging. They compared a monk to average people. Meditation is hardly the only substantial difference between the lives of these people. Monks have very different diets as well, just to name one thing.
- themodelplumber 7y agoI hope we can get to the point of social pushback on the word "meditation" as far too vague. There are so many different kinds, and some take completely contradictory approaches. For example, existentialist "now"-based sensory meditation vs. visualization-based meditation. And that's just one of many dichotomies. Not that I object to meditation by a long shot--it's just such rich world of alternatives and people deserve to know about that.
- derision 7y agoAt this point I see it as the mental equivalent of "exercise". There's so many different kinds of exercise, for many different goals. The same thing goes for mediation
- root_axis 7y ago> At this point I see it as the mental equivalent of "exercise". Is it though? We can at least all agree on the definition of exercise, not so with meditation. Without a common definition, I'm not sure what kind of empirical claims can be made about meditation.
- ses1984 7y ago>We can at least all agree on the definition of exercise Oh really.
- maerF0x0 7y agoI think the real issue is that exercise, being a physical thing is much easier to observe and parameterize. How many miles do you run on a flat treadmill? How high of Heart BPM? How much does the individual weigh? What movement is done, for how many reps and what weight? Now how does one parameterize the intensity/duration of a meditation session? And does it, like exercise, depend on the existing adaptations of the individual?
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- davidivadavid 7y agoAt this point I feel like most posts titled "Study suggests..." should be flagged.
- raarts 7y agoCan I add the trigger words: 'could', 'might', 'possible', and 'scientists say'.
- deepsun 7y agoAnd ones ending with question mark https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...
- jader201 7y agoYet this still has over 150 upvotes. Is the community that split in identifying whether there’s merit to such trendy studies?
- bjourne 7y agoWhy do you feel that?
- davidivadavid 7y agoEmpirically, most of them seem to emanate from unreliable, sensationalistic publications. Methodologically, "beware the man of one study," [0] especially when the language is vague ("suggests"). [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-...
- bjourne 7y agoEmpirically means supported by evidence. Do you have evidence to suggest that most HN posts titled "Study suggests ..." refers to flawed studies?
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoI find it serendipitously amusing that this post is right above "this is your brain on a crashing stock market" right now.
- ochronus 7y agoNot to be nitpicking but “rinpoche” is a honorific term, not a name.
- kranner 7y agoIt is being used correctly here (as on Mingyur Rinpoche's Wikipedia page). As long as they don't call him Mr Rinpoche...
- andy_ppp 7y agoCorrelation != causation <FacePalm>
- collyw 7y agoThere is actually a decent book written on this subject Altered Traits. It starts pointing out that there are thousands of studies on meditation, but many of them are pretty poor quality, lack controls, etc. so they only discuss the ones worth studying.
- valuearb 7y agoReproducibility crisis.
- lucisferre 7y agoN=1?
- JaceLightning 7y agoStudy of one person. That's not a trend.
- burmer 7y agohttps://www.theonion.com/eggs-good-for-you-this-week-1819565159 https://www.theonion.com/eggs-good-for-you-this-week-1819565...
- l_davis 7y agoI practice Buddhism. The primary practice of the sect I follow is to chant. When I chant, I feel better mentally. I have seen others do the same. I doubt that a scientific study has been done on this. I have no idea how you could do that and control all the variables. It's something anyone who wants to can try, though you can only go so far without a teacher and some kind of community. And if you live in a country where religious freedom is limited, there would also be challenges.
- sebasslash 7y agoYes, you tend to live a healthier life when you aren’t subject to extreme stress, or at least are able to use a medium to mitigate it. Meditation is one medium, one which I believed to be overhyped (but I guess it works for many) I prefer playing musical instruments, but there’s no studies claiming a link between playing music and slowing down aging. It doesn’t sell much into the “bio hacking” agenda.