How mindfulness improves your health

Mindfulness has been shown to reduce disease and improve health, having an impact on HIV-pathogenesis, depression, inflammation, psoriasis, and drug abuse amongst others. How does this work exactly? That’s what David Creswell and Emily K. Lindsay from Carnegie Mellon University explored in their recently published paper.

The working hypothesis is this: the body’s stress response has a negative impact on many diseases, and since mindfulness reduces stress, it therefore reduces disease. In studies looking at the effects of mindfulness on disease, mindfulness has the biggest impact on participants who are very stressed. Further, mindfulness helps most with diseases that are triggered or exacerbated by stress.

Creswell and Lindsay offer some specifics on how this might be possible. Overall, the thinking is that mindfulness changes the way we process stress in the brain, which then impacts our body’s stress response. Mindfulness helps activate the emotion regulation systems in our pre-frontal cortex. This is a much newer part of our brain (evolutionarily speaking) and regulates other parts of our brain. So for example, we may be emotionally triggered by something, and the deeper, more ancient parts of our brains are on a run away train with anger or fear. Our pre-frontal cortex will metaphorically step in and say “whoa whoa whoa, let’s take a look at what’s actually happening here. Let’s make some sense of it and maybe we’re actually safer than we thought, old brain parts, and we don’t need to get so carried away.” So greater activation in the pre-frontal cortex can help us regulate stress in this way. Research also supports that mindfulness can reduce the reactivity of those old, deep parts of the brain (e.g. the amygdala) in the first place.

Of course these brain systems are highly connected to the body. So when our brain gives the signal: “Things aren’t safe out there, prepare the troops!”, the body gets activated to prepare for some kind of attack. Mindfulness may reduce the strength of this connection, so that our bodies are less reactive to perceived stressors. Our bodies have a sympathetic nervous system response - that’s the “we’re preparing troops for battle” response. We also have a parasympathetic nervous system response - this is the “all is safe, so lets get some rest and build our reserves” kind of response. Initial research suggests that mindfulness training can reduce our sympathetic response to acute stressors as well as increase our parasympathetic activation. Basically, this means our bodies are able to live more of the time in a state of recovery and rebuilding, rather than one preparing for danger. This is important, because our body’s “prepare for danger” response, such as the release of the hormones norepinephrine and cortisol, can accelerate pathogenic processes and increase inflammation, which is bad news for many diseases. Bottom line: take a breath. Living in a calmer state can do wonders for your own strength and healing.


Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Another drink? Nah man, I'm good with just some breathing

Colleges and universities across the country spend a lot of time and resources addressing this common problem: binge drinking. Binge drinking can hinder students’ learning and academic achievement. Further alarming is how binge drinking leads to bodily injury, sexual assault, and even death. A complex problem with many roots, one team of researchers investigated the impact of a 4-week mindfulness intervention on students’ level of binge drinking.

Results indicated that after the intervention, students in the mindfulness intervention group reported significantly less binge drinking and fewer negative consequences of drinking. Further, they had increased levels of self-efficacy and dispositional mindfulness than the control group.

The authors of the study didn’t fully explore why the mindfulness intervention was successful, so here's a bit of back story based on other research and a plethora of anecdotal evidence. Binge drinking in college students (as well as adults) is often a reaction to difficult emotions - stress, overwhelm, uncertainty about belonging, etc. So one potential mechanism of why the intervention worked would be mindfulness’ strength as an emotion regulation skill. All of us to one degree or another try to soothe ourselves or escape from the difficulty of our current experience in one way or another - chocolate cake, TV, alcohol. Being mindful of our feelings, needs, and behaviors, we can begin to question whether having that next drink, or eating that entire cake is really going to help us feel better. And learning more skillful ways to soothe ourselves (i.e. breath and body practices, cognitive reframing, self-compassion, social connection), then we can be more efficacious in supporting ourselves through the often difficult situations we face in our lives.


Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Does virtual mindfulness translate to real mindfulness?

Lots of studies investigate the benefits of mindfulness and how it helps us live happier, healthier lives. So the question is, how can we get it? Up till now, most mindfulness practices were taught in person, but a new study investigated whether mindfulness could be taught online, and if learned online, will it still have the same benefits?

This particular study focused on a more clinical population of participants who were depressed or at risk for depression. Participants went through an 8 session web-based version of MBCT (Mindful Mood Balance, or MMB). After the 8 weeks, participants showed a reduction in depressive symptoms. Though technology may never replicate the presence of a human, this study shows promising results for the efficacy of this online program.


Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Aerobic exercise increases mindfulness

So by this point you probably know that mindfulness is good for you. It reduces depression and anxiety, prevents diseases, helps you do better at work or school, and so the list goes on. But how do we actually become more mindful? Do we have to sit down and meditate every day or are there other strategies? Some researchers in Germany investigated this question. Specifically, they looked to see if regular aerobic exercise could do the trick.

Participants were randomly split into three groups: an aerobic exercise group, a relaxation training group, and a waitlist control group (i.e. received no intervention, but were offered one of the interventions after the experiment ended). All participants’ level of mindfulness was measured before and after the 12-week long intervention. Findings showed that indeed, regular aerobic exercise was correlated with an increase in dispositional mindfulness. This was especially powerful for those participants who were most inactive before the experiment.

The researchers also measured changes in mental and physical wellbeing. They found that increases in mindfulness were associated with increases in mental wellbeing, however, were not correlated with changes in physical wellbeing. So even if that new exercise regimen isn’t really helping you keep off those pounds, it may still be working out your mind. So stick with it!


Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Conversing with strangers - noticing if it's fun...or not

Mindfulness of often thought of as a seated, contemplative practice, however it is also a way of engaging with the world. This lifestyle mindfulness, so to say, involves paying close attention to the world around us, so that we notice new things and are attuned to variation and change. A recent study conducted by researchers at Harvard investigated how this sort of mindfulness relates to our relationships. In particular they were interested in synchronicities, or the way people tend to unconsciously coordinate their behavior in conversations.

In a fun experiment, participants were split into a mindful treatment group and a control group, and within each group were paired off to have conversations with each other. Participants were then separated, completed another task, and then were allowed to return to resume their conversations. Results showed that people in the control group returned to their partners at a relatively uniform amount of time, while those in the mindfulness group showed much more variation in how long they took to return.

Researchers interpreted this to mean that mindfulness increased peoples awareness of whether they were actually enjoying the conversation or not, with those who returned faster reporting that they liked their partner more compared to those who were slower to return. In the control group, however, all participants returned about at the same time.

At the end of the experiment, those high in mindfulness enjoyed their conversation more and felt more comfortable with their partners. Additionally, partners in the mindfulness group showed more closely matching heart rates than partners in the control group.



Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Mindfulness Helps Reduce Gambling

Recent research investigated whether mindfulness might be a useful intervention to help people stop gambling. Compared to a waitlist control group, those in a mindfulness enhanced cognitive behavioral program showed significantly reduced gambling and gambling urges. At a 3-month follow-up, both groups still showed improvements, and there was a decrease in the number of participants meeting criteria for pathological gambling.

Further, those participants who reported some mindfulness practice even after the intervention ended showed significantly better outcomes than participants who reported no mindfulness practice after the completion of the program. This may indicate the important of practice, as well as the direct role of mindfulness in results.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Mindfulness Helps Reduce Emotional Eating

Very few of us only eat when we’re hungry and then stop eating once we’re full. We also have an emotional relationship to food. Some of us eat as a response to stress and anxiety, some of us don’t eat as a response to stress and anxiety. Some of us try to restrict our food consumption to lose weight but then binge eat when we feel so deprived and starved. These kinds for relationships with food aren’t always so healthy for our bodies (have you ever heard anyone say “Oh wow I’m feeling so stressed, please pass me that bowl of sautéed broccoli and quinoa?”), and using food generally doesn’t resolve our emotional distress.

A recent review article examined 14 different published studies that all used mindfulness as an intervention for binge eating, emotional eating, or weight change. Results indicate that mindfulness interventions successfully reduce binge eating and emotional eating, but the jury’s still out for effectiveness in weight loss. The mechanism through which mindfulness helps us have a more emotionally healthy relationship with food was not discussed at length in the paper. One hypothesis is that mindfulness gives us a better strategy for dealing with our negative emotions and thus reduces our need to use food as a coping strategy. This could be similar to findings in studies on mindfulness and alcohol consumption.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Romantic Relationships and Mindfulness: Let’s Have a Talk

Having difficult conversations with our romantic partners can be a necessary yet stressful experience. Past research has found that people who tend to feel less secure about their relationships experience even more anxiety when dealing with conflict with their romantic partner. Other research has found that mindfulness is associated both with better stress regulation and with feelings of more secure relationships.

A recent study investigated the relationship between mindfulness, secure attachment, and stress during a difficult conversation with a romantic partner. Participants (all heterosexual couples) filled out questionnaires measuring mindfulness and attachment (how secure or insecure they feel in their relationships). Then they came into the lab one week later, where they completed some activities including a conflict discussion task with their partner. Results indicated that more mindful participants had lower levels of cortisol (a stress hormone) during their conflict discussion and were better able to regulate their negative emotion after the discussion. Further, this relationship was largely explained through the fact that mindfulness is associated with more secure attachment.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

How Mindfulness Changes the Brain

Much recent research has discovered that practicing mindfulness meditation is associated with greater psychological wellbeing. The biological mechanism through which this happens is under current investigation. In a recent study, participants took a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course. Both before the course and after, participants had their brains scanned and they filled out questionnaires measuring their psychological wellbeing. Results indicated that participants reported greater psychological wellbeing after the course, and the brain scans revealed that participants also experienced a growth and strengthening of neural connections in certain areas of the brainstem. Further, there was a positive correlation between participants’ psychological wellbeing scores and their increased neural connectivity.

The brainstem is a very old part of the brain, and is central for regulating some of our most basic functions, like sleep, fear, arousal, and eating. The first region of the brainstem whose growth was associated with greater psychological wellbeing is one that is concentrated in serotinergic neurons (neurons that release serotonin). Serotonin has been found to effect sleep, mood, appetite, and conditioned fear, and drugs that change the levels of serotonin in the brain are currently used as treatment for many mood and anxiety disorders.

The second brain region whose growth was most correlated with increases in psychological wellbeing is one responsible for the synthesis and release of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. One of norepinephrine’s major roles is to regulate our body’s stress response. This part of the brain is also a focal area of anti-depressant drugs.

Overall, this study reveals that mindfulness causes physical changes in the brain, which in turn help give us the ability to cope with life’s challenges, and help us experience less anxiety and depression and greater happiness.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Hold on to your chromosomes!

Every time our body makes a new cell, we have to make a new copy of our DNA for that cell. With each copy made, we lose some of the nucleotides at the end. Though this slow damage to our chromosomes is part of our body’s natural aging process, it is counteracted by telomerase, which is an enzyme that works hard to add a nice little protective cap (a telomere) to the ends of our chromosomes.

Research has discovered, however, that there are other factors that can speed up or slow down this chromosome damage. For example, stress is one factor that speeds up the wear and tear. Mindfulness and meditation, on the other hand have been found to protect our telomeres and chromosomes. A recent randomized, controlled study found that mindfulnessmeditation leads to increased telomerase activity in blood cells. So cancel your facelift appointment – mindfulness meditation may be a key to successful aging!

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Burnout and Mindfulness

Going to work day after day is a centerpiece of most American adult lives. How to stay engaged, refreshed, and find meaning in our work is an important question for workers, and how to keep employees engaged and working effectively is an important question for employers.

A recent study investigated the relationship between burnout, mindfulness, social support, and job satisfaction. The study was conducted on a sample of employees working in a financial corporate environment in Johannesburg, South Africa. Participants completed questionnaires measuring burnout, mindfulness, social support and job satisfaction. Results indicated that all three constructs (mindfulness, social support and job satisfaction) were negatively associated with burnout. Upon further analysis of the data, researchers discovered that each construct was predictive of less burnout independent of the others. The strongest predictor was job satisfaction, followed by mindfulness, and then by social support.

Keryn Bteriterman-Loader

Reducing Physical Pain through Mindfulness

When we experience physical pain, we naturally think of that pain as existing solely in that hurting part of our body. If we have back pain, the problem is in our back. If we have stomach pain, the problem is our stomach. Though true in many ways, our experience of pain is slightly more complex. It is the nerves in our back or stomach that send a signal to our brains and then our brains interpret that signal as pain. Because of this intermediary step in our brains, it is possible for us to exert some influence over how much pain we experience by influencing the way our mind interprets those pain signals from other parts of our body.

A recent study examined how mindfulness might impact our subjective experience of pain. The researchers recruited 200 participants suffering from chronic pain and had them complete measures of mindfulness, experience of pain, emotional intelligence (the ability to recognize, regulate, and cope with one’s emotions), and pain management self-efficacy (our belief and confidence in our ability to cope with our pain). What they found was that those who were more mindful reported experiencing less physical pain, and scored higher on the measures of emotional intelligence and pain management self-efficacy. Upon further analysis, they found that it was the increased emotional intelligence and pain management self-efficacy that led to the relationship between mindfulness and experience of pain. In other words, mindfulness helps us feel more secure about being able to handle our pain and helps us better recognize and regulate our emotions. These two things, in turn, help to reduce our actual experience of physical pain. Researchers note that this relationship between mindfulness and subjective experience of pain could be a purely psychological one, or perhaps this increased capacity to handle or emotions, and belief in our ability to handle pain could prompt us to actually change our behavior in ways that help to minimize the pain.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Reducing Our Distress through Mindfulness

As humans, by nature we deal with distressing events. We experience loss - of loved ones, a job, of how things used to be. We get sick and hurt. We feel alone. We are confused about how to live a good life. The human experience is strewn with struggles, and so how we relate to these struggles can shape the experience and quality of our lives. Many of us often feel overwhelmed by distress. Others of us, afraid of becoming overwhelmed, try and hide by getting defensive or denying our experience. Though these are common reactions, they usually don’t support us in effectively processing our negative experience and moving forward to making wise decisions about what to do next and how we want to live going forward. Much psychological research investigates just this question of how to most skillfully relate to our distress.

A recent research study investigated how mindfulness impacts our ability to tolerate and deal with distress. Participants recruited from the general community were randomly split into either a mindfulness training group or a wait list control group (in which participants were only given mindfulness training after the completion of the study). Over the four weeks of the mindfulness training program, researchers found that those in the mindfulness group reported less emotional distress than those in the control group. Interestingly, there was no difference found in participants’ reports of their discomfort tolerance. This suggests that mindfulness doesn’t change the discomfort people experience around negative events, but rather it changes how distressing that discomfort is. In other words, we can be hurt and feel the pain, and mindfulness won’t change the fact that we’re having a painful experience. Mindfulness will, however, help to reduce all the narratives and judgments about how terrible the pain is, so that this negative experience is no longer so overwhelming and distressing. We can then accept the experience for what it is and move forward.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Mindfulness and Cognitive Bias

As much as we’d like to believe, our minds don’t process information in an objective and rational fashion. Extensive research reveals that we have many cognitive biases, in which our minds have a natural propensity to process information in a particular and biased way. A simple example is the negativity bias, where we tend to notice and remember negative events much more than positive ones (sound familiar?). Another bias is the sunk-cost bias, in which, if we have already devoted time, energy, money, etc. to something, we tend to feel compelled to keep on going and investing in that cause, even if we would be better off just moving on and not wasting any more of our resources. Sometimes these biases exist because they haven proven useful, but sometimes in our modern day it can be useful to overcome them (ex. pulling out of a bad investment or project, not wasting our calories on finishing a dessert that we really don’t like).

In a series of 3 studies, researchers at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and collaborators at INSEAD examined how mindfulness influences our susceptibility to this sunk-cost bias. In their first correlational study, they discovered a positive relationship between trait mindfulness and resistance to the sunk-cost bias. The next study found that a mindfulness meditation induction led people to experience greater resistance to the sunk-cost bias. Why does mindfulness lead to this decreased susceptibility to the sunk-cost bias? The third experiment showed that it was due in part to how mindfulness shifts our attention from focusing on the past and the future to focusing more on the present moment, and in part due to how mindfulness reduces our negative emotions. So if you ever find yourself thinking “well, I’ve already come this far, I should really just stick it out…” take a moment of mindfulness and see if maybe, just maybe, it might be better to cut your losses, move on, and never look back at that terrible chocolate cake.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

The Relationship between Mindfulness, Stress, and Alcohol

We all experience stress in our lives and how we deal with that stress can have a significant impact on our physical and psychological health and wellbeing. Research on mindfulness has indicated that mindfulness practices are helpful in improving coping with stress as well as in reducing alcohol consumption.

A recent study explored this further by investigating participants’ dispositional levels of mindfulness, as well as their drinking behavior and stress. The study found that participants who were more mindful experienced less stress and drank less alcohol. Additionally, they found that for participants low in mindfulness, high stress was associated with greater alcohol consumption. However, what is most interesting is that for participants high in mindfulness, high perceived stress was not associated with greater alcohol consumption. This indicates that mindfulness may be an effective way to help cope with stress, and in doing so help reduces alcohol use.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader