The study examined the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness exercises in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a group of untrained controls who engaged in 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 regulatory machinery and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation.
“The most interesting thing is that the changes were observed in genes that are current targets of anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs,” says Perla Kaliman, first author of the paper and researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona, Spain (IIBB- CSIC). -IDIBAPS), where the molecular analyzes were performed.
The research was published in the Journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.
Mindfulness-based training has shown beneficial effects on inflammatory disorders in previous clinical studies and is recommended as a preventive intervention by the American Heart Association. The new results provide a possible biological mechanism for therapeutic effects.
Gene activity can change depending on perception
According to Dr. Bruce Lipton can change gene activity on a daily basis. If the perception in your mind is reflected in 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 your cells by changing your thoughts.
The research of Dr. Lipton even illustrates that by changing your perception, your mind can alter the activity of your genes, creating more than thirty thousand variations of products with each gene. He goes into more detail, saying that the gene programs are located in the nucleus of the cell, and that you can rewrite those genetic programs by changing the chemistry of your blood.
In the simplest terms, this means that we need to change the way we think 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 that means is that your mind will adapt the body’s biology and behavior to your beliefs. If you have been told that you will die in six months and your mind believes it, then you will most likely die in six months. That’s called the nocebo effect, the result of a negative thought, which is the opposite of the placebo effect, where healing is mediated by a positive thought.”
That dynamic points to a three-party system: There’s a part of you that swears it doesn’t want to die (the conscious mind), trumped by the part that believes you will (the doctor’s prognosis, mediated by the subconscious mind). , which then initiates the chemical reaction (mediated by brain chemistry) to cause the body to conform to the dominant belief. (Neuroscience has recognized that the subconscious mind controls 95 percent of our lives.)
Now what about the part that doesn’t want to die: the conscious mind? Doesn’t it also affect the body’s chemistry? Dr. Lipton said it comes down to the way the subconscious, which holds our deepest beliefs, is programmed. It is these beliefs that ultimately cast the deciding vote.
“It’s a complex situation,” said Dr. Lipton. People are programmed to believe that they are victims and that they have no control. We have been programmed from the beginning with the beliefs of our mother and father. For example, when we got sick, our parents told us to go to the doctor because the doctor is the authority on our health. We were all taught in childhood that doctors were the authority on health and that we were victims of physical forces beyond our control. The joke, though, is that people often get better on the way to the doctor. That’s when the innate ability to self-heal kicks in, another example of the placebo effect.
The results of Davidson’s research show a downregulation of genes involved in inflammation. The 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 tag. Furthermore, the extent to which some of these genes were downregulated was associated with faster cortisol recovery to a social stress test involving an improvised speech and tasks requiring mental calculations performed in front of an audience and a video camera.
Biologists have suspected for years that such a thing exists epigenetic inheritance occurs at the cellular level. The different types of cells in our body are an example of this. Skin cells and brain cells have different shapes 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.
The main result is that meditators experienced genetic changes after mindfulness exercises that were not observed in the non-meditating group after other quiet activities – a proving-of-principle outcome that mindfulness exercises can lead to epigenetic changes of the genome.
Previous studies in rodents and humans have shown dynamic epigenetic responses to physical stimuli such as stress, diet or exercise within just a few hours.
“Our genes are quite dynamic in their expression and these results suggest that the calmness of our minds can actually have a potential influence on their expression,” says Davidson.
“The regulation of HDACs and inflammatory pathways may represent some of the mechanisms underlying the therapeutic potential of mindfulness-based interventions,” says Kaliman. “Our findings provide the basis for future studies to further assess meditation strategies for the treatment of chronic inflammatory conditions.”
Subconscious beliefs are key
Too many positive thinkers know that thinking good thoughts—and reciting affirmations for hours—doesn’t always produce the results that feel-good books promise.
Dr. Lipton did not argue this point because positive thoughts come from the conscious mind, while contradictory negative thoughts are usually programmed into the more powerful subconscious mind.
“The biggest problem is that people are aware of their conscious beliefs and behaviors, but not of unconscious beliefs and behaviors. Most people don’t even recognize that their subconscious minds play a role, when the fact is that the subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind and that we run 95 to 99 percent of our lives from unconscious programs.
“Your subconscious beliefs work for you or against you, but the truth is that you are not in control of your life because your subconscious mind trumps all conscious control. So if you try to heal on a conscious level – by quoting affirmations and telling yourself you are healthy – there may be an invisible subconscious program sabotaging you.”
The power of the subconscious is elegantly expressed in people who express multiple personalities. While occupying the mind frame of one personality, the individual may be severely allergic to strawberries. Then, when he or she experiences the mindset of another personality, he or she eats it without consequences.
The new science of epigenetics promises that every person on this planet has the opportunity to become who they truly are, complete with unimaginable power and the ability to operate from and pursue their highest possibilities, including healing our bodies and our culture and way of life. in peace.