Our microscopist (Kim Ulvberget) tested this blood before and after a guided meditation! In the beginning of his video, we see an immune cell and RBCs with healthy activity. Then after about forty minutes of guided meditation and a new blood test, the blood demonstrated a clear change in activity. Notice that the RBCs are moving around much more than before and if you look closely, we can also observe waste being collected, in order to push debris a chemicals out of the blood. There was also a noticeable increase in T-cell activity, which consists of a family of immune cells that can kill cancer cells, virus infected cells & fungi. No foods or drinks had been ingested prior to the blood tests and the patient was not exposed to stress between the tests. Along with these changes, meditation is also believed to stimulate positive emotions. This combination of changes are believed to calm the autonomic nervous system while also activating the dopaminergic system in the brain, which is responsible for reward-related cognition, executive control and flexible thinking. Therefore, meditation is believed to momentarily broaden attention and thinking, enabling individuals to draw on higher-level connections and a wider-than-usual range of percepts or ideas. In turn, these broadened outlooks often help individuals to discover and build consequential personal resources. These resources can be cognitive, such as the ability to mindfully attend to the present moment; psychological, such as the ability to maintain a sense of mastery over environmental challenges; social, such as the ability to give and receive emotional support; or physical, such as the ability to ward off the common cold and / or improve our blood’s functions!
Written by Student Doctor: Navpreet Singh Badesha ©09/07/2016 All Rights Reserved.
Video credit: Kim Ulvberget
This research on the ‘Meditation’ was published in the National Library of Medicine.
