During meditation, stress hormones like cortisol and adrenalin are reduced in our blood whilst bliss hormones like dopamine and serotonin are produced. The bliss hormones would stay in our body system for a while until the next daily mediation begins.
Meditation can change the brain over time.
- Long-term meditators have better preserved brain than non meditators (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01551/full).
- Meditation reduces activity in the default mode network, which causes the mind to wander, most of the time to less uplifting thoughts. (Yale university, https://www.pnas.org/content/108/50/20254.short)
- Meditation reduce the symptoms of depression, anxiety and pain according to a study conducted at John Hopkins
- Some Harvard scientists found out in a study that mediation can change the structure for the brain by increasing the cortical thickness of the hippocampus. Hippocampus helps with learning and memory. They also found that the brain cell volume of amygdala, which is responsible the fear, anxiety and stress is also reduced due to meditation.
- It is also believed that meditation has the ability to epigenetically change our genetics, bringing about positive physiological and biochemical changes in our body. There are substantial literature that suggests medication including other practices like Tai Chi, Yoga and etc can alleviate stress-dependent symptoms of various diseases including psychological disorder, inflammatory diseases, aging and cancer. (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01767/full). More studies in the future have to be done and recorded to scientific prove the correlation between meditation and epigenetic. Until then we remain hopeful.
