Just One Thing - Meditate Facts By Dr Michael Mosley

that was good we would all like some quick and simple ways to improve our health but we're bombarded with often conflicting advice so if you were going to do just one thing to improve your mental and physical well-being what should it be maybe some beat TR to boost your workout meditation to improve your immune system what about a bit of dancing to Big up your brain power I'm Dr Michael Mosley and this is just one thing where each episode we'll explore one thing you can start doing today to improve your health or life in ways you might not [Music] [Applause] expect that was good I've been pressing paw on a busy day take 10 minutes to do something that's been proven to improve sleep and memory reduce pain and stress and boost my mood I'm certainly in a very Mellow Mood right now I've been practicing mindfulness also known as mindful meditation and though it is something which has become super fashionable in recent years it is based on some very ancient ideas and some surprising science meditation can have a remarkable effect on the brain done regularly it can improve working memory and even change the structure and function of our brains research has shown that regular meditation could even be a way to counteract age related decline in the brain and you don't need to be a long-term or expert meditator to see positive effects now I am by Nature something of a pessimist with a tendency to dwell on the gloomy side of life and when I took up mindfulness meditation a few years ago I was surprised to find that just a few weeks of 10 minutes today really seem to help my mindset the clinically proven benefits really are both widespread and impressive taking some time each day to focus on your breath and check in with your body can reduce pain and stress levels as well as boosting your immune system and well-being so is mindful meditation something that you'd like to focus on I'm speaking to Peter who is based in London tell me Peter have you done meditation before no I sometimes get into a situation where where you know I've got many things to think about either work or personal life and so on and I think I struggle sometimes with focusing on one thing and it's hard to clear the mind and focus so one of the things with a Restless mind is that also means that often you find it difficult sleeping is that something you struggle with your sleep if there are things kind of worrying me or on my mind sometimes I'll wake up or find it hard to go to sleep are you a very positive kind of guy or are you a bit more EOS oh that's a good question depends on the situation I think I'm generally quite positive about the outside world and then perhaps a little bit more half empty when I think internally so I'm going to be asking you to try a short guided mindfulness meditation you have to do it for 10 minutes a day for 10 days and it's really important you stick to it do you think that's going to work out for you yes definitely that's something I've thought about in the past and never actually got around to um so definitely looking forward to giving this a try a warning is you are going to find it quite difficult particularly you have a very busy Agile Mind someone likened it to trying to herd Wild Horses certainly to begin with you'll find your mind endlessly going away so I'm looking forward very much to hearing how you get on with it and uh do make sure you do actually allocate at least 10 minutes a day to it right yeah it's good to ensure some discipline around it absolutely all right we'll follow up with Peter later in the week to see how he's getting [Music] on meditation has been practiced for thousands of years it is part of Hindu taist and of course Buddhist Traditions but it wasn't until the 1970s that mindfulness meditation was introduced to the west by a cognitive scientist called John kabat Zin he was interested in using Buddhist inspired practices in a secular way to reduce stress and to study the benefits through scientific research and there has certainly been a lot of that since the 1970s there have been more than 8,000 studies involving mindful meditation and some of the findings are truly impressive in one small study where 17 volunteers were put through a very intense mindfulness course they found that just eight weeks of meditation led to measurable increases in Gray matter density in specific regions of the brain involved in regulating our emotions learning and memory which was pretty amazing considering this was just 2 months and it can also pave the road to Dreamland in 2015 a randomized control trial with 49 older adults found that those who completed a six- week mindfulness meditation course had improvements in insomnia fatigue and depression it's also been shown to improve your mental health reducing anxiety and stress stress and that reduced stress could have knock on effects on your immune system one study took two groups of volunteers one group were asked to meditate daily the other group did not then after 8 weeks they were all given a flu jab amazingly the meditation group had a greater antibody response to the vaccine I think it is really impressive that a practice which is essentially about the mind can have such a big impact on our blood cells and immune system having said all that it is worth mentioning that mindfulness does not work for everyone and may even increase stress so how does mindfulness meditation work and how can you get the most from it I'll explore the science with a mastermind of mindfulness in a moment first let's check in with Peter to see how he's getting on with the challenge so I just completed um day five one weird thing is there's a section of the meditation exercise where you count your breaths count to 10 and then restart and it's amazing how difficult it is to stay focused and count to 10 I always find myself losing track of my counting I do feel more relaxed after each exercise and I look forward to continuing the practice to see what I can achieve we'll check in with Peter one final time at the end of the week first let's explore the mysteries of the mind with Dr Sarah Lazar an associate professor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School Dr Lazar studies the Neuroscience of meditation Dr Lazar what is the difference between mindfulness and meditation so mindfulness is often defined as present moment awareness of experience in this open Curious non-judgmental way and you can be mindful anytime anywhere 24/7 meditation is a formal way of training the Mind where you choose one object and you focus on it and so typically with mindfulness meditation you pick something like say the breath and you just pay attention to it in this open Curious nonjudgmental way what are the main benefits of mindfulness meditation from your research well it's really clear that it reduces stress both self-reported stress and also biological markers of stress like cortisol and inflammation and whatnot what we've shown is in the brain that you actually get changes in brain structure so for instance one of our findings was that the amydala which is the main figh ORF flight part of the brain it actually gets smaller and there's a correlation between the size of that and stress so the smaller it becomes the less stress people report and we've shown this now in three different studies and what's really interesting is that in one the studies we compared it to exercise and exercise is really good for reducing stress but it didn't change the shape of the amigdala is extraordinary the idea that you can change the size and structure of the migler using mindfulness how long did people have to be doing mindfulness meditation to actually see a change in the amydala we told people to practice every day for 40 minutes for eight weeks and some people did that but not everyone did you know some people practice only like 20 30 minutes a day some people practice only a couple days a week and what we saw is more or less a correlation with the amount of practice the more practice you get the more if you get it's really clear that even short 10 15 minutes a day several times a week is beneficial now you mentioned pain there how can it help reduce pain it's really effective for a wide variety of conditions it helps reduce anxiety there's some evidence it also helps with sleep and with pain definitely there is some decrease in pain with meditation but the big change is how you respond to the pain for people with chronic pain because often times The Chronic pain is not going to go away and so if you can change your relationship to the pain that's tremendous for them what about the impact of mindfulness on things like dementia risk or forgetfulness so our newest news study we had people 65 to 80 they had no previous meditation experience and there was improvements in memory uh over just 8 weeks these benefits were maintained for at least up to a year and some benefits were maintained for up to two years we showed that it sort of gave a boost to the hippocampus part of the brain that declines with age so it really does seem that it's promoting brain structure brain function in particular in the country of memory and attention brilliant another good reason to take it up as I get older indeed are there some people who shouldn't take up mindfulness because I have read that it can have negative effects people with a history of trauma not that you shouldn't at all but you should approach it very carefully if someone has a lot of trauma in their background they should start with five or 10 minutes and definitely under the guidance of a good mental health professional and also a good meditation teacher who has experienced working with people with trauma do you have to have a live teacher or would an app do it's always good to have a live teacher but I feel like the apps are a great supplement how do you keep yourself to the task I began to meditate some years ago mindfulness meditation there were mornings when I found it really difficult when my mind just really didn't want to be trapped and had this image of a wild stallion trying to escape and quite often it jumped over the fence and got away uh what are your tips for me that's part of it that's really the key is that with the practice you're really starting to pay more attention to your mind in a particular way so that as it starts to wander off you catch it and you bring it back before it's lost we've suggested to our volunteer they start by doing 10 minutes a day using an app and see how he goes from there that seem like a really great way to start so that is the science let's check in one final Time with Peter I'm happy to have completed the course I liked that the meditation was stressing the importance of being aware but not mental of thoughts and feelings I do plan to continue practicing meditation and following the guided meditation over the next few weeks particularly as I start a new job in a week's time and we'll have to manage the stress that that will generate so I'd like to see how continued practice helps with that overall feeling very positive uh about the experience and continuing it in the future I'm really glad to hear that Peter has enjoyed it I've been been doing it all week too and I've noticed a difference in my stress levels in my mood just from focusing on my breath if you want to learn more about how simply breathing can help to lower anxiety reduce pain and enhance your decision- making check out our take a breath episode from series 1 today I'm in a wood and I'm about to do a walking meditation the idea is to walk slowly paying attention to how my legs feel when they hit the ground and using the sound sounds and feelings of my steps to refocus my attention so there it is mindfulness meditation just 10 minutes a day and you can improve your mental health reduce pain and actually change the structure of your brain to the better left excuse me now as I'm off for a slow mindful walk so that's it it's just one thing you can incorporate into your daily routine which really could benefit your body and life if you want to hear more of the theory then why not subscribe