Three months-longitudinal changes in relative telomere length, blood chemistries, and self-report questionnaires in meditation practitioners compared to novice individuals during midlife
Minkyu Sung, Eugene Koh, Yunjeong Kang, Jinhee Lee, Jiyeon Park, Ji Young Kim, Soyoung Shin, Yeon Hee Kim, Noriko Setou, Ul Soon Lee, Hyun‐Jeong Yang
Medicine October 14, 2022 DOI: 10.1097/md.0000000000030930 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Quasi-experimental design Longitudinal Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Experienced MBI practitioners and MBI-naïve controls |
| Intervention | intensive meditation training |
| Duration | 3-month intervention |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Telomere Gerontology Longitudinal study Clinical psychology Pathology Genetics |
| Citations | 4 |
| Key findings | Relative telomere length was maintained in the meditation group but significantly reduced in the control group over 3 months. |
Abstract
Aging accelerates during midlife. Researches have shown the health benefits of mind-body intervention (MBI). However, whether MBI is involved with aging process has not been well understood. In this study, we approach to examine the relations of MBI with this process by investigating an aging marker of the peripheral blood, blood chemistry, and self-report questionnaires. A quasi-experimental design was applied. Experienced MBI practitioners participated in a 3-month intensive meditation training, while the age, gender-matched MBI-naïve controls led a normal daily life. Measurements were taken at before and after the 3 months for relative telomere length (RTL), blood chemistry, and self-report questionnaires including items about sleep quality, somatic symptoms, depression, anxiety, stress, emotional intelligence (EI), and self-regulation. For RTL, the repeated measures analysis of variance showed a significant group*time interaction (P = .013) with a significant post hoc result (P = .030) within the control group: RTL was significantly reduced in the control while it was maintained in the meditation group. In repeated measures analysis of variance for blood chemistries, there were significant group differences between the groups in glucose and total protein. In the post hoc comparison analysis, at post measurements, the meditation group exhibited significantly lower values than the control group in both glucose and total protein. There were significant group-wise differences in the correlations of RTL with triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase and glutamic pyruvic transaminase. Any of self-report results did not show significant changes in group*time interaction. However, there were group differences with significant (P < .05) or a tendency (.05 < P < .1) level. There were significant improvements in depression, stress and EI as well as tendencies of improvement in sleep quality and anxiety, in the meditation group compared to the control group. Our results suggest that meditation practice may have a potential to modify aging process in molecular cellular level combined with changes in psychological dimension.
Comparable studies
Other experimental studies on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Cancer patients (clinical intervention study) | 2003 | Mixed methods: scale development, correlational, quasi-experimental, laboratory, experience-sampling, and clinical intervention study | |
| Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. | 2008 | Controlled laboratory experiment | |
| Mindfulness and mind-wandering: Finding convergence through opposing constructs. | 2012 | Two studies: correlational study and experimental study | |
| Mental Training Enhances Attentional Stability: Neural and Behavioral Evidence | 2009 | Experimental study | |
| Mindfulness meditation and substance use in an incarcerated population. Incarcerated population | 2006 | Quasi-experimental with treatment-as-usual control condition |
Citations in the library
Cites 16
- Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being JAMA Internal Medicine January 6, 2014
- Increased default mode network connectivity associated with meditation Neuroscience Letters October 28, 2010
- Differences in Functional Connectivity of the Insula Between Brain Wave Vibration in Meditators and Non-meditators Mindfulness March 19, 2018
- Loving-kindness meditation slows biological aging in novices: Evidence from a 12-week randomized controlled trial. Psychoneuroendocrinology October 1, 2019
- Brain education-based meditation for patients with hypertension and/or type 2 diabetes Medicine May 1, 2019
and 11 more in the library