Link between meditation and longevity. By Elizabeth Blackburn

Lifespan community, How is your mental health and stress levels? It is coming to light the damage that stress causes to us over time. We need to take note and implement ways to reduce it in these difficult times.

Check this out, the link between long-term stress and the damages it does to our health.

A biochemist by the name of Elizabeth Blackburn and a biologist by the name of Joe Gall working at Yale in the 1970’s discovered an enzyme called telomerase that can protect and rebuild telomeres. Even so, our telomeres dwindle over time. And when they get too short, our cells start to malfunction and lose their ability to divide – a phenomenon that is now recognised as a key process in ageing. This work ultimately won Blackburn the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Can Meditation Really Slow Ageing?

Numerous studies demonstrate links between chronic stress and indices of poor health, including risk factors for cardiovascular disease and poorer immune function. Nevertheless, the exact mechanisms of how stress gets “under the skin” remain elusive. We investigated the hypothesis that stress impacts health by modulating the rate of cellular aging. Here we provide evidence that psychological stress— both perceived stress and chronicity of stress—is significantly associated with higher oxidative stress, lower telomerase activity, and shorter telomere length, which are known determinants of cell senescence and longevity, in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from healthy premenopausal women. Women with the highest levels of perceived stress have telomeres shorter on average by the equivalent of at least one decade of additional aging compared to low stress women. These findings have implications for understanding how, at the cellular level, stress may promote earlier onset of age-related diseases.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0407162101

Have a read of these articles. Also here are some suggestions on treating stress. The Calm or Plum Village App can be downloaded for free and is a good start, it has meditation for rookies, download and go. Focus on grounding exercises, mindfulness and breathing exercises. They are good starting points,, has done wonders for me.

Here is a video called “This is water” very deep and may be helpful. Let me know your thoughts?

Stay tuned for more helpful tips and tricks to have a long and healthy life.