Loving-Kindness Meditation Can Lengthen Telomeres in Women

February 25, 2015 · Posted in Risk Factors 

woman meditating

Telomeres sit at the end of DNA strands and shorten with each cell replication. Shorter telomeres are associated with aging and an increase in multiple medical and psychiatric disorders, while some healthy behaviors including exercising, eating healthy, avoiding smoking, and even being married can help maintain telomere length. New data from researcher Elizabeth Hoge and colleagues suggests that a particular type of meditation can lengthen telomeres.

Previous research has found that three months of full-time meditation increased telomerase, an enzyme that repairs telomeres. Loving-Kindness meditation, which comes from the Vipassana Buddhist tradition and focuses on positive intentions, unselfish kindess, and warmth towards all people, has been found to produce positive effects in individuals who practice it, including increasing positive emotions and sense of purpose, and bringing about improvement in physical symptoms including headaches, nasal congestion, and weakness. Hoge and colleagues hypothesized that people who practice Loving-Kindness meditation would have longer telomeres than control participants of the same age, gender, education level, and experience of depression.

Participants who practiced Loving-Kindness meditation had been doing so near-daily for at least four years, and averaged 512 lifetime hours of this particular type of meditation, and 4,927 lifetime hours of any type of meditation.

The researchers found a trend toward longer relative telomere length in the Loving-Kindess meditation group compared to the control group, and significantly longer telomeres in women who meditated than in women who did not. The researchers conclude that meditation may have a positive effect on mortality.

Other habits that are focused on others, such as caring for a spouse, volunteering in the community, and practicing compassion, forgiveness, and altruism have been found to have health benefits. In a 2012 longitudinal study of elderly participants by Loren Toussaint et al. in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, forgiveness was associated with longevity. Thaddeus W.W. Pace et al. reported in a 2009 article in Psychoneuroendocrinology that compassion meditation reduced levels of certain inflammatory markers.

Editor’s Note: People with affective disorders or at risk for them should consider making some of these positive lifestyle practices part of their daily routine.

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