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 Researchers measured gene activity, blood markers and reported
wellbeing during the vacation and months afterward, and found a
large and immediate “vacation effect” in all participants. For those
who continued meditating, benefits were seen even 10 months later.
“Vacation in a relaxing, resort-like environment takes you away from
your day-to-day grind, which may be high stress in which your body
is in a more defensive-like posture, with pressures to meet
deadlines, dealing with angry customers, ‘battling’ with colleagues
for resources to accomplish your mission or whatever,” said senior
author Dr. Eric Schadt, founding director of the Icahn Institute for
Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mount Sinai in New York.
“On a relaxing vacation you allow your body to get out of that
defensive posture, reduce your levels of stress which in turn
affects the states of cells that are involved in your immune
system,” he said.
At the molecular level, additional changes only happened, or
happened more, in the meditation group, including more effective
manufacture and use of proteins, he noted.
“We don’t know what this means exactly, but given associations with
biomarkers of aging, there is the potential that these changes could
enhance overall wellbeing and longevity,” Schadt told Reuters Health
by email.
The researchers enrolled 102 women ages 30 to 60 in the study and
tested their blood before and after five days at the La Costa Resort
and Spa in Carlsbad, California. Some women were participating in a
meditation and yoga retreat while others were simply staying at the
resort and not taking part in yoga or meditation training.
About a third of the women had already booked the retreat and were
regular meditators, while the remaining 70 had no history of
meditating. Half of the non-meditators were randomly assigned to the
yoga/meditation program and the other half were randomly assigned to
vacation only.
In addition to providing blood samples before and after the retreat,
the women reported on their depression symptoms, stress, vitality
and mindfulness on day five, one month later and 10 months later.
Psychological wellbeing scores improved for all three groups by day
five and one month later. At the 10-month point, women who had
meditated during the retreat had greater decreases in depressive
symptoms and stress than those who had only been on vacation,
according to the results reported in Translational Psychiatry.
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Gene expression changes and aging biomarkers in blood samples had
improved significantly for all groups at the end of the retreat,
indicating benefits from simply being on vacation. In addition,
women who were already regular meditators had higher activity of
telomerase, an enzyme that repairs and fortifies the tips of
chromosomes. Telomeres get shorter and shorter as we age.
Vacation and meditation seemed to turn down defense responses,
inflammation response and innate immune response, Schadt said.
“Of course you want these pathways activated if they are fighting
off a disease, but if they are continually activated we have seen
that they are partially responsible for increasing susceptibility to
a whole range of diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s and
autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory
bowel disease,” he said.
It’s not clear if a weeklong vacation or meditation sessions would
lead to changes in corresponding diseases, he said.
The authors acknowledge that the study, which was funded by The
Chopra Foundation and Benioff Foundation, is small and doesn't
measure whether the changes observed will have any effect on disease
or longevity.
“I don’t know that our results are such that they would speak to
changes people should make in their lives to achieve a more healthy
state, but rather it is another strong piece of evidence that
relaxing and meditating may produce favorable healthy benefits,”
Schadt said.
“There is little doubt reduced stress is beneficial for health or at
least associated with better health outcomes,” said Dr. Guillaume
Pare, co-director of the McMaster Genome Facility at McMaster
University in Hamilton, Ontario, who was not part of the new study.
“However, linking the specific genes and pathways identified in the
paper to health outcomes will require much work to confirm
causality.”
SOURCE: http://go.nature.com/2bzoA81 Translational Psychiatry,
online August 30, 2016.
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