Based on data from the American Academy of Anti Aging, ninety percent of age linked illnesses are brought on by the declining processes of senescence [aging]. Medical specialties will be making room for anti aging medicine that is structured toward longevity and the best possible health for an individual and it will begin with preventive medicine.
Detecting illness in its early stages gives the opportunity to utilize medical advances that have become increasingly more available. Commercialized anti aging practices and medical science breakthroughs will now need to make room for the novel, more cerebral anti aging method of meditation as a longevity practice. It has shown that it can be an effective anti aging technique, literally subtracting years from your physical age.
Stress Equals Aging
Aging is not an easy situation to understand. There are numerous complexities and issues, which play themselves out as a person advances in years. The one constant that research scientists agree on unanimously is the fact stress plays a significant role in our emotional and physical aging process.
Doctor Eva Selhub, Medical Director of the Mind Body Medical Institute believes if we can have an effect on the stress reaction, then we can have an influence over the aging process. She feels there is a good reason that those who have much experience at meditation wind up living so long and look good doing so.
The author of the book “The Blue Zone, Dan Buettner, has researched centenarians the world over and believes that by changing minor things to do with lifestyle can mean an additional ten years on many people’s lives. He thinks that age is about ten percent gene pool and ninety percent lifestyle choices. Buettner said that have stress release tactics available such as meditation and prayer were vital in the longevity regions he spotlighted in his book. Contemplative thought was a foremost factor in prolonged aging and sustained health.
One of the initial pioneers into meditative practices and longevity was Dr. Robert Keith Wallace and his conclusions were released in print to the Journal of Neuroscience and had to do with transcendental meditation, specifically.
Wallace discovered that those practitioners, who were chronologically aged at fifty years average and practiced Transcendental Meditation for at least five years, had a biological age that was about twelve years younger than their chronological age. What this translates to is a fifty five year old meditation practitioner had the
physiological age of a forty three year old individual.
There were a couple participants in the study who, it was discovered, had a natural age that was twenty seven years younger than their drivers license said they were. The same study has been duplicated a couple of times since the original. Other trials of a similar nature have been conducted displaying the advantageous effects of transcendental meditation and its effect on the aging process.
Time has recorded numerous instances of earthly deities who were devoted to meditation practices and how their lives confirmed the huge capability of humankind’s body to exist well beyond what we as a society can expect for a life span today.
It is true that these yogis and ageless beings devoted nearly their complete life to the practice of meditation, we average Joe’s and Jane’s of the world have an opportunity to live longer than ordinarily believed possible and in a healthier manner. Meditation has been recognized as a means of relieving stress and is one of the best ways to lessen the impact of age related stressors in one’s life.
Doctor Bernard Siegel, a professor at Yale University School of Medicine stated in his book – Love, Medicine and Miracles: “Other physicians’ clinical research and my own daily medical practices have left me convinced that the state of a person’s mind can change the state of the body by employing the central nervous system, the endocrine system and the immune system. Peace of mind extends to the body a “living” message, versus depression, fear, and unresolved conflicts passing on a “dying” message.”
Siegel goes on to say that the physical advantages of meditation have of late been recognized and data confirmed by research scientists of the Western medical community. Meditation also increases one’s ability to deal with pain and decreases their physiological age. Essentially, meditation decreases the wear and tear on the mind and body allowing individuals to live longer and remain healthier.
Science research authorities now think we have these innate apparatus’ that enable us to do battle with, perhaps even reversing the process of aging. Novel research being conducted on age reversal is ongoing and though scientific community argues back and forth over the numerous hypotheses, study has exposed how meditation can significantly affect the creation of three stress associated hormones, themselves related to the longevity process and aging.
Cortisol, DHEA and Melatonin
Cortisol is also known as the stress hormone and it is innately generated through our adrenal glands. When we respond to stress, our body’s release adrenal and cortisol. When we suffer from prolonged or unceasing stress, our body’s are left open to the attacks from these hormones, resulting in anxiety, depression, an inability to manage stress and eventually we suffer physical sickness and ill health.
Biochemist and renowned researcher, David Zava, Ph.D., states that an over amount of cortisol due to stress for extended periods leads to a disproportionate amount of tissue break down in all the major structural systems in the body including skeletal, muscularity, skin and brain which will induce rapid aging.
DHEA [Dehydroepiandrosterone], otherwise referred to as the youth hormone, is likewise generated by the adrenal glands and works as a barrier against the stress associated hormones such as cortisol. It is one of the vital factors that establish biological age and is significantly lowered as we age. When DHEA quantities are reduced, we become more vulnerable to illnesses and advancing age. Anxiety and stress reduce DHEA quantities in our bodies.
Studies have shown that DHEA has increased the life expectancy of lab rodents by as much as fifty percent. There was not only longer chronological life but the rodents looked more youthful as well. DHEA volumes are linked straight to mortality or the probability of death in humans. A twelve years trial conducted on two hundred forty men from age fifty to seventy nine years old discovered that DHEA quantities were contrarily linked to morality from heart disease and from all other causes of death.
Melatonin is a critical component of quality sleep and will have a soothing response that will upgrade our mood and feeling of well being. Active research is also revealing that melatonin is a force as an antioxidant but like so many other elements in our bodies, it diminishes in quantity, as we get older.
Studies conducted in Italy by Dr. Walter Pierpaoli of the Biancalana-Masera Foundation for the Aged based out of Ancona, has revealed that melatonin therapies extended the life expectancy of lab rodents by up to twenty five percent. Furthermore, rodents cared for using melatonin appeared healthier and lived longer lives while displaying vigorous, sexually charged lives.
Other trials conducted using melatonin showed that melatonin was the most effective hunter of free radicals – those nasty, unstable molecules known to instigate cancers and heart disease via cell damage, harm to DNA and tissue injury.
Vincent Giampapa, M.D., Chief of Longevity Institute International and prior President of the American Board of Anti Aging Medicine has done extensive research into aging and his results for utilizing specific audio technology engineered for deep meditation showed that:
Cortisol was reduced on average by 46.47 percent displaying constructive modifications in sixty eight percent of the participants.
More than sixty eight percent showed higher DHEA quantities, median increases were at 43.77 percent.Melatonin quantities were raised by a median amount of 97.77 percent with constructive modifications occurring in more than seventy three percent of the participants.
The consistent practice of meditation conveys a broad range of healthy benefits but without a doubt, the most intriguing of all and at the front of the line from a medical perspective is the way it appears to stimulate the body’s innate anti aging potential.
To paraphrase Deepak Chopra, famed author and lecturer on Ayurveda, spirituality and mind-body medicine, “most individuals believe that aging is permanent. We now know that there are means within the human apparatus that allow for the reversing of the aging process. This occurs by correcting the diet, increasing antioxidants, detoxifying the body of contaminants, by exercising and doing yoga, breathing techniques and through meditation.”
Anti Aging, Anti Aging Theories, Health And Aging, Longevity
Tue, Feb 16, 2010
Anti Aging, Anti Aging Theories, Health And Aging, Longevity