In 2019, Debra Halsch was diagnosed with smoldering multiple myeloma, a rare blood and bone marrow disorder that can develop into a type of blood cancer. Her doctors recommended chemotherapy, she said, but she feared the taxing side effects the drugs might wreak on her body. Instead, the life coach from Piermont, New York tried…
Tag: meditation
Mindfulness Doesn’t Enhance Older Adults Cognitive Function
In a recent randomized clinical trial, exercise and mindfulness failed to improve cognitive function in older adults. For up to 18 months, researchers studied the cognitive effects of exercise, mindfulness training, or both in older adults who reported age-related memory changes but had not been diagnosed with dementia. “We know beyond any doubt that exercise…
Meditation Plus Aerobic Exercise Helps Reduce Depression
A new study has found that the mind-body combination of meditation and aerobic exercise, done twice a week for only two months, reduced the depression symptoms for a group of students by 40 percent. Says Brandon Alderman, lead author of the research study: “We are excited by the findings because we saw such a meaningful…
Compassion Meditation May Be Antidote To A Drifting Mind
Compassion meditation reduces mind-wandering, new Stanford research shows. Mind-wandering is the experience of having your thoughts not remain on a single topic for long. Prior research suggests that people spend as much as 50 percent of their waking hours in mind-wandering, often without realizing it. Said co-author James Doty, Stanford neurosurgeon and the founder and…
Do Different Meditation Types have Different Effects on the Brain?
Buddhism is now one of the fastest growing religions in the world, and there are many forms of meditation taught within the different lineages. So among all those meditation types, do some affect the brain in different ways, from a physiological point of view? It turns out that different types of meditation do have qualitatively…
Selfless Love Switches Off Brain’s Need For Reward
Romantic love tends to activate the same reward areas of the brain that are activated by cocaine. But new research shows that selfless love, a deep and authentic wish for the happiness of others, actually turns off the brain’s reward centers. Said Judson Brewer, adjunct professor of psychiatry at Yale University and now at the…