[Photo: Katrin Wuertemberger/Bongarts/Getty Images]
Stress has been shown to age us. Meditation might turn that around.
...In the decade since [Elizabeth] Blackburn and [Elissa] Epel's original study, the idea that stress ages us by eroding our telomeres has also permeated popular culture.
...But as evidence of the damage caused by dwindling telomeres piles up, she is embarking on a new question: how to protect them.
..."Ten years ago, if you'd told me that I would be seriously thinking about meditation, I would have said one of us is loco," she told the New York Times in 2007. Yet that is where her work on telomeres has brought her. Since her initial study with Epel, the pair have become involved in collaborations with teams around the world -- as many as 50 or 60, Blackburn estimates, spinning in "wonderful directions." Many of these focus on ways to protect telomeres from the effects of stress; trials suggest that exercise, eating healthily and social support all help. But one of the most effective interventions, apparently capable of slowing the erosion of telomeres -- and perhaps even lengthening them again -- is meditation.
www.cnn.com/2014/07/10/health/can-meditation-really-slow-aging/index.html
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