Meditation associated with preserved telomere length in breast cancer patients

http://www.fastcompany.com/3040039/its-not-just-for-your-brain-meditating-can-actually-change-your-dna

by prostoalex • 12 years ago

38 41 12 years ago

ajarmst• 12 years ago

A more accurate headline might be that meditation appears to ameliorate genetic damage associated with stress. But I guess that's less surprising, exciting and clickable than implying that meditation causes Lamarckian inheritance.

codyb• 12 years ago

Life is all about that Lamarckian inheritance buddy boy!

xxxyy2• 12 years ago

Yes, and it is worth noting that telomeres, while technically being DNA, do not code any proteins. In fact their complexity is at a completely trivial level - just a repeated sequence of "TTAGGG". This is also the part of DNA that does not get sequenced with the rest of one's code. There is a lot of speculation on what else can extend telomeres [1]. So yes, a clickbait.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere#Lengthening

dang• 12 years ago

We edited the title in an attempt to make it more accurate and neutral. If anyone suggests a better one, we can change it again.

geekam5• 12 years ago

Can people who meditate point to good resources on how and where to start? Books, videos, blogs etc.

thatswrong0• 12 years ago

Mindfulness in Plain English (http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html)

dwc• 12 years ago

Great recommendation. It's an older edition of a print book (still in print for decades) that's online for free with permission. It's well done, clear, and has very little woo in it.

purerandomness• 12 years ago

UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center: http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=22

Jon Kabat-Zinn doing a session at Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc

And, of course, Headspace: https://www.headspace.com/

Just sit back, relax, and enjoy one of those. And then all of them.

geekam5• 12 years ago

Is it worth paying headspace 8 bucks a month?

fnordsensei4• 12 years ago

Meditation is a lot less complicated than sometimes advertised. It can be helpful to know that alternative terms for the same activity is "contemplation" or "deep thought". It's a skill though, and you'll get better at it over time.

Set a timer for five minutes, sit down in a comfortable position (usually better than lying down, to keep yourself awake). Count your breaths until 10 and then count backwards down again. Repeat until the timer goes off, and bam! Meditation accomplished.

Don't worry if your mind drifts off, that's not a sign of failure. Just keep doing the task at hand (counting).

Use headphones if you need to block out sound. Slow music without lyrics or plain nature sounds usually work better.

Once you have that down, there are about a billion variations and ways to continue, but starting out doesn't have to be more complicated than outlined above.

Usually we wish to measure progress when undertaking any kind of endeavor, especially new ones, but measuring (or even defining) progress when it comes to meditation can be hard sometimes. It may require discipline on your part in order to overcome the perceived lack of feedback, but I assure you that you'll be very glad that you kept at it once you do start to notice what happens.

Scarbutt• 12 years ago

but I assure you that you'll be very glad that you kept at it once you do start to notice what happens.

Can you expand a little on this? What does one starts noticing?

pakitan2• 12 years ago

Is there any chance the effects of meditation can be achieved by, say, trying to solve a puzzle in your head? Meditation sounds great and all but when you actually start doing it, it's painfully boring and feels like a waste of time. And that's what usually puts me off, every time I start.

stelonix• 12 years ago

This. Getting started is tough (specially if you are a skeptic) due to the lack of perceived feedback, but if you manage to get through with it, before you realize you'll be doing it for a lot longer than your first tries.

geekam5• 12 years ago

Thanks. Is there a specific time of the day that this should be done? This seems really simple for what meditation has been advertised by some camps and "gurus". I can give five such minutes for the betterment.

Gnewt2• 12 years ago

I fully agree that meditation is less complicated than advertised. However I'd like to state that "contemplation" and "deep thought" are alternative terms for a specific type of meditation called mindfulness meditation: "the intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of one's attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment."

When I meditate, my goal is not actually to contemplate anything at all -- it is to clear my mind, whittle my senses down until the only thing I feel is consciousness. Ultimately, in a state of deep meditation, my goal is a fully blank state, in which I'm doing nothing except existing.

I find that this helps me tremendously in my mindfulness in normal life, but I don't attempt to be mindful _during_ meditation in the same way.

powerset• 12 years ago

reddit.com/r/meditation is pretty decent

glaugh• 12 years ago

I've tried quite a few things and the most useful thing for me has been https://www.headspace.com/ . It's "daily" guided meditation (that after not too long is barely guided). The narrator's voice is really good, not too hippie, very calming. Everything is pleasant and well-designed.

This was also pretty good, if you'd rather read a book: http://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Achi...

geekam5• 12 years ago

Edit: Do you pay for headspace or just use their 10 minute? I just signed up.

Thanks for the book suggestion, I just bought this book.

subdane• 12 years ago

Here's a nice five minute example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMz_UagXkFk

MarkL4• 12 years ago

http://meditationstuff.wordpress.com/

ramblerman• 12 years ago

headspace is a tremendous app with a new guided meditation everyday.

It slowly lets you build up your practice, as well as choose a specific branch of focus as you progress. The ptich sounds gimmicky, but I never managed more than 5 consecutive days on my own. With Andy (the narrator) I'm at 30 days and counting

anentropic• 12 years ago

It could also have been the yoga "The first group was randomly assigned to an 8-week cancer recovery program consisting of mindfulness meditation and yoga"

this is a crummy article with a crummy headline about one single study which may or may not also be crummy

waps• 12 years ago

Maybe it's as simple as this :

Start a new research. Work with 1-sigma significance (~2% error rate allowed). Then investigate the favorite brand of soup of the brothers of cured cancer patients. Make sure to research about 50 brands.

Huge news ! If you get your brother to eat soup brand 23 you have a significantly higher chance to survive cancer ! Huge article in every newspaper.

What happened here ? 2% error rate.

mrbonner• 12 years ago

Exercise can also change your DNA: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/how-exercise-change...

Exposure to radiation can change your DNA.

Heck, everything can change (read mutate) your DNA.

xxxyy2• 12 years ago

The title of the article you provided is completely incorrect. There is no change to DNA detected by these studies. What gets changes is the expression level of individual genes. Expression level can be changed by almost everything, as it is exactly the fine art of turning ACTG sequence into living organisms.

cordite• 12 years ago

Or.. Just set up a context such that genes become disabled, enabled, or in combination, yield different behaviors due to the presence (or lack) of signaling structures.

It's not like you suddenly evolve or jam a syringe of one minute retrovirus in your neck.

steven2012• 12 years ago

Telomeres are not the same as DNA.

tokenadult2• 12 years ago

I see after a Google search that it has been mostly popular press outlets without experienced medical reporters who have commented on this story so far. For the most part, what we are seeing online are recycled editions of the study group's press release. The underlying journal publication "Mindfulness-based cancer recovery and supportive-expressive therapy maintain telomere length relative to controls in distressed breast cancer survivors" is open-access,[1] so medically knowledgeable people here can read the study and check whether its methodology makes sense.

I note that the lead author of the study, Linda E. Carlson, is part of a group of cancer researchers promoting "integrative" approaches to cancer treatment. Another cancer researcher commenting on this approach thinks that "integrative" cancer therapy so far promises much more than it can actually deliver in improved patient outcomes.[2] The original headline of the Fast Company article submitted here, already changed by the Hacker News moderation team, is surely wrong, and it's not at all clear that this extraordinary claim will replicate if an independent group of researchers attempt to replicate the results. If I or any of my loved ones should happen to have a case of cancer (which is rather rare in my family), I will ask for advice on how to treat it from a doctor who practices science-based medicine.

[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full

[2] http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/selling-integrative-onco...

reader5000• 12 years ago

Your argument appears to be that the word "integrative" implies non-science based medicine/research. Is there any reason to believe the journal Cancer is in some way lacking in scientific standards? I have no idea. But assuming it is a well-respected publication the results appearing in it require more evidence to dismiss other than a paper author does "integrative" research.

tokenadult2• 12 years ago

One of my problems with this study (and many preliminary medical intervention studies hyped mostly by press releases) is that it deals with a biomarker--telomere length--rather than with a hard endpoint, for example actual improved cancer survival and reduced all-cause mortality in the patients.

Anyone looking on can read the paper for themselves for issues like sample size, the reported statistics, whether the expected finding was specified in advance, and so on. A recent submission to HN[1] cautions that press releases are not usually good guides to what a study has actually found.

[1] http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/communicating-health-sci...

Meditation associated with preserved telomere length in breast cancer patients

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