Meditation has been proven for years to help stroke recovery. Yet I bet your doctor has no protocol on it and this won't make one bit of difference. Ah well, no one cares to actually solve stroke. It is way too fucking hard for the existing stroke leadership to even know how to get survivors to 100% recovery.
Damn it all: stroke is easy; 5 steps.
1. Describe the problems exactly.
2. Write thousands of RFPs to researchers to solve those problems.
3. Fund them with foundation grants.
4. Write stroke rehab protocols based on the research.
5. Get the Nobel prize in medicine
A Nobel Prize awaits. Isn't that enough incentive? Or is this all just too fucking hard for all these MDs and PhDs working on stroke? Do you need a stroke survivor to lead you?
- meditation (46 posts back to January 2012)
Neuroscience shows that 50-year-olds can have the brains of 25-year-olds if they sit quietly and do nothing for 15 minutes a day
- Neuroscientist Sara Lazar found that people who practiced meditation had more gray matter in the part of the brain linked to decision-making and working memory: the frontal cortex.
- While most people see their cortexes shrink as they age, 50-year-old meditators in the study had the same amount of gray matter as those half their age.
- Participants in the study averaged about 27 minutes of the habit a day, but other studies suggest that you can see significant positive changes in just 15 minutes a day.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Neuroscientist Sara Lazar, of Mass General and Harvard Medical School, started studying meditation
by accident. She sustained running injuries training for the Boston
Marathon, and her physical therapist told her to stretch. So Lazar took
up yoga.
"The yoga teacher
made all sorts of claims, that yoga would increase your compassion and
open your heart," said Lazar. "And I'd think, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm
here to stretch.' But I started noticing that I was calmer. I was better
able to handle more difficult situations. I was more compassionate and
open hearted, and able to see things from others' points of view."
Eventually, she looked up the scientific literature on mindfulness
meditation (a category into which yoga can fall). She found the
ever-increasing body of evidence that shows that meditation decreases
stress, depression, and anxiety, reduces pain and insomnia, and
increases quality of life.
So she started doing some neuroscience research of her own.
In her first study,
she looked at long-term meditators (those with seven to nine years of
experience) versus a control group. The results showed that those with a
strong meditation background had increased gray matter in several areas
of the brain, including the auditory and sensory cortex, as well as
insula and sensory regions.
This makes sense, since
mindfulness meditation has you slow down and become aware of the present
moment, including physical sensations such as your breathing and the
sounds around you.
However, the neuroscientists also
found that the meditators had more gray matter in another brain region,
this time linked to decision-making and working memory: the frontal
cortex. In fact, while most people see their cortexes shrink as they
age, 50-year-old meditators in the study had the same
amount of gray matter as those half their age.
That's remarkable.
Lazar and her team wanted to make sure this wasn't because the
long-term meditators had more gray matter to begin with, so they
conducted a second study. In it, they put people with no experience with meditation into an eight-week mindfulness program.
The results? Even just eight weeks of meditation changed people's
brains for the better. There was thickening in several regions of the
brain, including the left hippocampus (involved in learning, memory, and
emotional regulation); the TPJ (involved in empathy and the ability to
take multiple perspectives); and a part of the brainstem called the pons
(where regulatory neurotransmitters are generated).
Plus, the brains of the new meditators saw shrinkage of the amygdala, a
region of the brain associated with fear, anxiety, and aggression. This
reduction in size of the amygdala correlated to reduced stress levels in
those participants.
How long do you have to meditate to see such results? Well, in the
study, participants were told to meditate for 40 minutes a day, but the
average ended up being 27 minutes a day. Several other studies suggest that you can see significant positive changes in just 15 to 20 minutes a day.
As for Lazar's own meditation practice, she says it's "highly variable.
Some days 40 minutes. Some days five minutes. Some days, not at all.
It's a lot like exercise. Exercising three times a week is great. But if
all you can do is just a little bit every day, that's a good thing,
too."
Turns out meditating can give you the brain of a 25-year-old. Too bad it can't also give you the body of one.
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