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Stress damages the brain.
The work being done by researchers McEwen and Magarinos, at the Laboratory for Neuroendocrinology at Rockefeller University in New York, is an exciting example of what scientists are learning about the damaging effects of stress on the brain--damage that we can reverse with meditation!
The picture below shows the changes to a rat’s brain before and after just two weeks of the stress of smelling a cat. The neuronal pathway pictured is in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that provides short term memory, and concentration. It’s where we remember what we just read, and where we put our keys.
"Before" is on the left, and "After" is on the right.  Notice how many pathways are gone after only two weeks of continual stress. They were “dissolved away” by the stress bio-chemicals in the rat’s brain. The rat couldn’t see the cat, and the cat couldn’t get to him…but he could smell it, and he couldn’t get away from the threat he felt because he smelled the cat.
The picture doesn’t show it, but at the same time, new pathways were growing in another, deeper part of his brain. Researchers have discovered that stressed mammals begin growing new dendrite offshoots in the amygdala, a deep part of the brain that helps to regulate emotions. Those new pathways carry extra messages of fear and anxiety.
This is not great news for the rat.
He is now less able to remember what he has learned, he can’t concentrate and figure out what to do next, and he’s more and more likely to be afraid, even when there is nothing to fear. To make things even worse, the same bio-chemicals that carry fear and anxiety messages also suppress his immune system, disrupt sleep and intensify pain, so now he’s stuck in the cage, unable to find the way out, tired, afraid, sickly, and in pain!
All this from the effects of an experience where he never even saw a cat—he just smelled danger, and his body reacted with stress to the threat of what might happen next.
Have you ever had times of worry about what might happen next? Have you had a threat to your job, to your health and safety, or to the safety of your loved ones? The same bio-chemical processes that changed the rat’s brain happen to you and me.
Our experiences restructure our brains, and those changes help to shape our new experiences. The past has shaped our experience of the present, because it has changed the pathways and processes in our brain.
Meditation can heal and restore your brain Recently, a group of scientists from Harvard University, MIT and other research institutions confirmed that meditation experience enhances the very structure of our brain.
People who meditated regularly had increased thickness in specific areas of the cortex. They had more brain to work with! This study also found that regular meditation appeared to slow age-related thinning of the frontal cortex. That means that meditation helps our brain flourish, while it also helps protect our brain from the negative effects of stress and even the negative effects of aging.
Scripture encourages us to meditate, to put our roots down deep into His nourishing, healing waters, so that we will be fruitful and flourish.
Now science is showing us how important that nourishment is to our mind and our body, as well as our soul. |