Meditation may make you look younger
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Can Meditation Really Make You Look Younger?
Charlie Knoles and his daughter.
There’s a particular buzz around
meditation right now, probably a direct result of more than half of
working American adults being seriously concerned about their stress levels.
Studies—and history—have shown that regular practice can reduce stress,
lower blood pressure, and keep depression and anxiety at bay. If you’re
more concerned with the external effects of stress, how’s this: regular
meditation might even make you look younger. Recent studies show that
long-term practice changes your body on a cellular level that might
actually slow down aging. Vedic Meditation instructor Charlie Knoles
says, “People are spending a fortune on anti-wrinkle creams even though
many of them have no scientific backing for their claims. They could be
getting a much better result from meditating.”
It’s a bold statement, but
decades worth of research supports his theory. A study published in the
International Journal of Neuroscience in the mid-‘80s measured the
biological age of long and short-term meditators versus the general
population. After measuring blood pressure, vision, hearing, and skin
elasticity, the former appeared 12 years younger than the general
population! Even short-term practitioners came up five years younger. Of
course, Knoles isn’t surprised. “Look at any president,” he says. “In
four years, they go from looking youthful, fresh, and vibrant to gray,
haggard, and worn out.”
One study in Japan measured
levels of the enzyme telomerase in a group attending a meditation
retreat for three months. Telomerase repairs the caps at the ends of
chromosomes, called telomeres. Fraying telomeres are one of the main
genetic causes of aging, but meditators showed a huge increase in
reparative telomerase at the end of their retreat, physical proof of
reverse aging. “These studies have found that meditation actually causes
your DNA to heal itself, repairing your cells from a genetic level,
which is quite amazing,” says Knoles. Whether this directly affects the
markers of aging—a slower body, wrinkles, and gray hair, is still being
studied, but anything that tackles stress is beneficial.
Knoles sees the proof in both
his students and himself. “You can see the way their skin shines, they
look brighter, they look younger, there is a healthful glow that
transcends age,” he says. “I can always tell who practices and who
doesn’t.” Knoles has practiced every day since the age of four, thanks
to his father Vedic Guru Thom Knoles and most people assume he’s in his
twenties. “When I tell people that I am 37, there is an audible gasp,”
he says. “Meditation is powerful.”
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