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Scientist have long known
that there are particular genes that predispose a person to
specific diseases and health disorders – but that merely
carrying a breast-cancer gene, for example, does not guarantee
the onset of that condition. Genes can be turned on or off by
various factors, which means they may or may not express the
instructions carried in their DNA.
“Now we have found how
changing the activity of the mind can alter the way basic
genetic instructions are implemented.” sates Harvard Medical
School professor Herbert Benson, M.D., co-senior author of the
Plos ONE report. “The mind can actively turn on and turn off
genes.”
Towia Libermann, Ph.D.,
director of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Genomics
Center and the report’s co-senior author, adds, “This is the
first comprehensive study of how the mind can affect gene
expression, linking what has been looked on as a ‘soft’
science with the ‘Hard’ science of genomics.”
“Mind-body practices that
elicit the relaxation response (such as meditation, repetitive
prayer, yoga, breathing exercises, progressive muscle
relaxation, etc) have been used world wide for millennia to
prevent and treat disease,” the research report said. “This
study provides the first compelling evidence that the relaxation
response elicits specific gene expression changes in short-term
and long-term practitioners.
The study indicated that
the relaxation response alters the expressions of genes involved
with processes such as inflammation, programmed cell death
(which can keep genetically impaired cells from turning into
cancers), and how the body handles free radicals-molecules
produced by normal metabolism that, if not appropriately
neutralized, can damage cells and tissues.
According to the ABC News
summary: “Researchers for the study took blood samples from a
group of nineteen people who habitually meditated or prayed for
years, and nineteen others who never meditated. The researchers
ran genomic analyses of the blood and found that the meditating
group suppressed more than twice the number of stress-related
genes-about 1,000 of them-than the nonmeditating group. The more
these stress-related genes are expressed, the more the body will
have a stress response like high blood pressure or inflammation.
Over long periods of time, these stress responses can worsen
high blood pressure, pain syndromes, and other conditions.
“The nonmeditating group
then spent ten minutes a day for eight weeks training in
relaxation techniques that involved repeating a prayer, thought,
sound, phrase, or movement. By the end of the training, the
novice meditating group was also suppressing stress-related
genes, although at lower levels than those of the long-term
meditating people.” In their public Library of science report,
the researchers stated: “It is becoming increasingly clear
that psychosocial stress can manifest as system-wide
perturbations of cellular processes… Chronic psychosocial has
been associated with accelerated aging at the cellular level…
and with increased vulnerability to a variety of disease states.
Our result suggest that consistent and constitutive changes in
gene expression resulting from the relaxation response may
relate to long-term physiological effects.”
Commenting on these
results, the noted science columnist Sharon Begley of Newsweek
observed: “The genes in our cells don’t matter one iota if
they’re not turned on, and there are many things in life that
can turn off bad genes such as those that raise the risk of
disease such as breast cancer… It really is time to stop
thinking of our DNA as immutable. Even thinking can change
it.”
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