Recently, I’ve been thinking about the fact that I wanted to get back into meditating, which I learned a few years ago but got out of the habit when working on my book.
Soon after thinking about meditation’s values, Dr. Mercola — who runs www.mercola.com, the most popular # 1 natural health website on the Internet — ran a story about how meditation helps increase attention and concentration.
- Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that the thickness increased in regions of the brain involved in memory and attention, a phenomenon reported by USA Today. Interestingly, those areas usually shrink as people get older, but older meditators in the study actually avoided some of that shrinkage. This study suggests that regularly meditating could help people maintain their ability to remember and focus on details.
- Another study from the University of Kentucky suggests that people taught to meditate for 40 minutes did better on tests that measure attention than after reading for 40 minutes.
- A third research project of mostly Buddhist monks showed that meditation produced a jump in brain waves associated with vigilance and that it activated brain regions involved in attention.
See another interesting article on www.mercola.com about meditation’s ability to improve your physical and mental health.
As the article points out, meditation could help with the following conditions:
- Stress, tension, anxiety and pain
- High blood pressure
- Chronic pain
- Headaches
- Respiratory problems such as emphysema and asthma
- Sleep disturbances
- Gastrointestinal distress
- Fatigue
- Skin disorders
- Mild depression
- Premenstrual syndrome
- Irritable bowel syndrome
Those are certainly a lot of benefits!
I’m convinced that meditation also can help people with their sugar addiction issues.