MEDITATION IMPROVES BODY IMMUNE

MEDITATION IMPROVES BODY IMMUNE

Eight days of intensive meditation led to strong immune system activation, University of Florida researchers and their colleagues found . The findings are believed to be the first comprehensive genome study of how meditaton affects biological processes directly involved in disease development. At the heart of this research is the practice of Inner Engineering, namely a meditation and yoga program that emphasizes inner well-being.

What are the actual benefits of Meditation practice for the body? To prove their findings, Chandran and his collaborators studied the genetic profiles of 388 samples obtained from 106 people before and after an advanced Inner Engineering retreat in April 2018 at the Isha Institute of Inner-Sciences in McMinville, Tennessee. The retreat is tightly controlled: Participants remain silent for eight days, meditate for more than 10 hours a day, eat vegan food and follow a regular sleep schedule.

Blood samples from retreat participants were collected five to eight weeks beforehand, then before and after the retreat, and three months later. Genomic analysis ultimately found several immune-related pathways and other cellular pathways were altered after the meditation retreat. Surprisingly, they found increased post-retreat activity in 220 genes directly related to the immune response. This included increased activity in 68 genes associated with interferon signaling, an important part of the body's anti-viral and anti-cancer response. They also found that the improvement in the immune system after the retreat was primarily due to meditation and not due to diet, sleep patterns, or diet. gender differences.

The increase in gene activity among interferon signaling genes is significant. Interferon proteins mobilize other parts of the immune system to defend against the virus and several recent studies have shown that interferon signaling is imbalanced in patients with severe COVID-19. Essentially, meditation uses a coordinated network of core genes and regulators to exert positive effects on the immune system, the researchers found.

“This is the first time anyone has shown that meditation can increase your interferon signals. "This shows a way to voluntarily influence the immune system without drugs," he said.

The researchers report that these findings also have potential implications for many immune-related conditions such as COVID-19 and multiple sclerosis. Although meditation increases activity in 68 interferon-related genes, patients with severe COVID-19 have the opposite problem: a lack of interferon activity that inhibits resistance to the virus.

When researchers compared the activity of interferon genes in retreat participants and seriously ill COVID-19 patients, the differences were striking. Meditation activated 97% of interferon response genes, compared with 76% gene activation in mild COVID-19 patients and 31% in severe COVID-19 cases. They also observed the opposite trend in inflammation signaling genes, where they saw very high levels of inflammatory genes in severe COVID-19 patients, compared to mildly ill patients and no changes in inflammatory genes after meditation. Similarly, meditation produced beneficial gene activity comparable to conventional interferon treatment given to multiple sclerosis patients. Overall, these findings support the idea that meditation contributes to the improvement of various health conditions, the researchers