It is thought that meditation can be an inexpensive treatment for a better health.
(1) This is because meditation can be a beneficial practice for decreasing blood pressure, potentially decreasing cardiovascular diseases, lower stress and also affect brain activity.(1,3) There are different types of meditation buddhist, yoga, mindfulness meditation as well as transcendental meditation to name a few.(1) Meta Analysis and studies were analyse to get an understanding on the possible effects of meditation and the possible physiological changes it might have in the body.
There has been different experiments that have investigated the effect of meditation and blood pressure. Some evidence has shown that there could be a benefit of various types of meditation in the reduction of systolic and diastolic blood pressure.(4) The mechanisms in which meditation might be able to decrease blood pressure is not yet understood.(1) In one experiment where they used mindfulness meditation for a period of 8 weeks, with a control group of no meditation at all there was no difference of blood pressure found between this two groups.(1) There has been different studies of mindfulness based meditation that has shown that meditation can help lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure.(1) The conclusions of whether meditation can help or not to blood pressure are still inconclusive. Better studies need to be performed in order to make specific conclusion that meditation can help decrease blood pressure.
(1)Studies that were analyse show no proper experimental design to find their data credible that meditation can be helpful as a primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. The experiments that show that meditation can help with cardiovascular disease have been rated poorly do to the poor experimental methods they used. For example a low number of patients, short following time periods and use healthy patients that had no cardiovascular problems. (1) The data provided cannot be trusted do to the poor experimentals design. In the other hand data shows a potential benefit of meditation for secondary cardiovascular disease prevention although we cannot fully trust the data because experimental design could be improved.(1) It is believed that do to the fact that meditation might be helpful in reducing stress and other psychological problem like insomnia can help have a lower risk of cardiovascular diseases, but is still not yet concluded.
(1) Some studies have shown that practice meditation has a significant decrease in stress levels, improvement in sleep patterns and mood.(1) Many studies show the benefit of meditation with stress and mood although the strength of the evidence is poor do to the poor experimental design.(1) Studies have being performed and have shown that meditation can reduce stress and improve over all quality of life in patients with a cardiovascular disease, but there has only been a few studies to test this.(1) Different test have been used to test how stress is affected by meditation like salivary amylase test. The salivary cortisol test can be performed in order to tell the amount of cortisol present when stressed and it is the most commonly used to evaluate how cortisol is affected by meditation and the effects of stress. (1) During this studies small sample size, short follow up time periods and possible bias can also be limitations for the findings.
(1)Different studies have looked at brain activity using different techniques like MRI scans, electroencephalographic techniques which helps to observe electrical activity in the brain.(1,2) The effects on meditation on the brain has been studied for several years. The brain can be modified do to the neuroplasticity characteristic of the brain and those changes can happen by the formation of new circuits between neurons.
(1) Studies have shown that practice meditators can have a significant change in the resting state of the brain electrical activity.(1,2) In a research using MRI scans to gather data while an experienced mediator meditated it was observed that parts of the brain were activated from the occipital to the frontal lobes. It was shown that meditation activates various parts of the brain for example the anterior cingulate cortex having to do with self awareness. As well as the insula having to control emotions and body homeostasis.(2) This was different from control conditions where no meditation occur.(2) Over all some data of the experiments show positive effects of meditation on reducing blood pressure, cardiovascular disease prevention, and also stress.
Although they have positive finding about meditation the data cannot be fully trusted. This is do to the fact of poor experimental design like small sample size, small randomized group, short follow up time periods and possible experimental bias from the researchers. Although meditation can have some effects on brain activity it was usually observed on experience mediators. There is experiments that show that meditation can have positive effects on decreasing blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, stress and improve brain activity. There needs to be further research on previously mentioned physiological changes for researches to be able to make a conclusion whether meditation is capable helping with this physiological changes.