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Writer's pictureHelder Barroso

Can meditation help with stress?

When done on a regular, sustained basis (that is to say, something close to daily, for fifteen, thirty minutes at a time), meditation seems to be pretty good for your health, decreasing glucocorticoid levels, sympathetic tone, and all the bad stuff that too much of either can cause. .


Now the caveats:


First, the studies are clear in showing physiological benefits while someone is meditating. It’s less clear that those good effects (for example, lowering blood pressure) persist for long afterward.


Next, when the good effects of meditation do persist, there may be a subject bias going. Suppose you want to study the effects of meditation on blood pressure. What do you do? You randomly assign some people to the control group, making sure they never meditate, and some to the group that now meditate an hour a day. But in most studies, there isn’t random assignment. In other words, you study blood pressure in people who have already chosen to be regular meditators, and compare them to non-meditators.


It’s not random who chooses to meditate, maybe the physiological traits were there before they started meditating. Maybe those traits even had something to do with their choosing to meditate. Some good studies have avoided this confound, but most have not.


Finally, there are lots of different types of meditation. Don’t trust anyone who says that their special brand has been proven scientifically to be better for your health than the other flavors. Watch your wallet.


I for one love the state app (Breathing App) which allows me to choose breathing techniques based on the task I am about to do, such as sleep, realx, train, etc...


I also really like the Calm App as they have a huge amount of beneficial features.


Also my Oura ring as some features which really help me to meditate and relax.


I do my best to do some of the above at least twice per day.



Taken from Sapolsky, Robert M.. Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

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