A week. If you focus on a meditation retreat, to restore yourself and face the hardships of a year of professional activity, the seven days can help you recover in the best possible way. And not only on the psychological front since there is the hope of also obtaining real (positive) changes for the entire organism, also demonstrated by biological parameters. And these are not insignificant effects. They range from the function of the nervous system, up to the responses of the immune system that defends us from infections and beyond, and to metabolism difficulties.
Promoting guided mindfulness with a menu of mind-body techniques (and the commitment to a valid level of participation and involvement) is research by scholars at the University of California San Diego coordinated by Hemal H. Patel, published in Communications Biology.
What changes in the organism
The study, very in-depth and therefore carried out on a particularly small population (we are only 20 healthy adult volunteers) highlights how combining meditation and other mind-body techniques can rapidly induce measurable changes both in brain activity and even in specific blood tests. The adoption and involvement (it is essential to apply) of guided practices of this type allow the positive activity of circuits involved in brain flexibility, metabolism, immune function and even alleviating pain.
The “treatment” cycle took place in a residential retreat, leading to the completion of a journey of approximately 33 hours of guided meditation. The sessions, in order to have a sort of “control”, used an approach that also included a placebo, therefore a kind of “inert” treatment of which the participants were aware. Before and after this weekly treatment, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor brain activity and took blood samples to measure changes in metabolism, immune function and other biological markers.
Result: the approach not only allows you to relieve stress or relax but helps to radically change the way the brain interacts with reality and to quantify these changes on a biological level. In this sense, researchers have also found signs of increased neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to adapt, reorganize and form new connections.
Not just brain
The control with functional Magnetic Resonance made it possible to see how there was a relative decrease in brain activity in the regions associated with the flow of internal thoughts during meditation. The researchers interpreted this pattern as a sign of more efficient brain function.
Not only that: the research also involved the exposure of neurons grown in the laboratory to the blood taken from the retreat participants. Under this “invisible” stimulus, the nerve cells in the test tube were characterized by the development of longer branches and the possibility of creating a greater number of connections, indirect traces of the possible greater ease of “communication” between neurons.
On the metabolism front, the cells exposed to the plasma taken after the withdrawal showed an increase in the ability to burn sugars thanks to glycolysis. This mechanism transforms glucose into energy and is indicative of a more flexible metabolic state.
Pain chapter: after the week of meditation, the concentrations of opioids produced by the body increased in the blood. these can help the body react better to pain. Finally, the reactions of the immune system changed: both inflammatory and anti-inflammatory signals increased at the same time, suggesting that the immune system was implementing a more complex adaptive response, rather than limiting itself to a simple variation in activity.
In short: the study helps to understand how non-pharmacological approaches such as meditation can promote general health. The mechanisms of action hypothesized to explain these effects are different: it is thought that by stimulating neuroplasticity, and therefore the brain’s ability to adapt, important results can be obtained. Obviously we are only at the beginning. But research proves how the mind and body are interconnected and how practices that act on the psyche also leave clear traces on the biological front. There are things to understand, such as how long the biological changes last and whether there is a need for meditative “reminders”. But the road is extremely fascinating.
