Meditation Reverses Ageing Brains

This is cool. The Washington Post reported a Harvard researcher found that meditation can change your brain. Literally. Sara Lazar, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, put anecdotal evidence to the test and found that meditation “decreased stress, decreased depression, anxiety, pain and insomnia, and an increased quality of life.” But how long do you have to meditate to get it to work?

Lazar’s study shows that after just eight weeks, subjects who practiced meditation 40 minutes each day had an increased amount of gray matter in the frontal cortex, which is “associated with working memory and executive decision making.”

The cortex shrinks as people age, which can create problem solving and short-term memory challenges. But according to Lazar, the 50-year-old meditators had the same amount of gray matter as 25-year-olds!

Yet one more reason to practice meditation, mindfulness and yoga–it counts! Especially as rates of illnesses like Alzheimers and ALS continue to rise.