Susan Lee Smalley and the change in genes through meditation.
can you buy modafinil over the counter п»їSusan Lee Smalley, Ph.D., has argued that it is possible to achieve gene change through meditation. Actually, she is not the only one to have made such a claim, but she is one of its most important advocates because of her knowledge of the field.
Susan Lee Smalley is an anthropologist with a PhD in medical genetics. She is the director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) and one of the first people to talk about the change in genes through meditation. She points out that research shows changes in at least 15 genes in people who meditate.
Smalley has argued that neuroplasticity, that capacity of the brain to change according to experience, would also have effects at the genetic level. He has stated that the most interesting thing about changing genes through meditation is the fact that it would be a pathway to self-induce profound modifications through voluntary experience.
"Meditation is the eye of the soul."
-Jacques Benigne Bossuet-.
Preliminary researchIt was once believed that the genetic information with which each person was born was unmodifiable. It was thought that this was a kind of definitive programming, which was decisive. Over time, this has been reevaluated. Today it is known that genetic information has an important level of flexibility and that this applies to all ages of life.
One of the investigations that proves this flexibility, and that later gave rise to the study of gene change through meditation, was carried out by Michael Meaney, at McGill University in Montreal. He and his team observed epigenetic changes in the brains of rodents that had not received sufficient maternal care during their first weeks of life.
This led to the animals manifesting chronic stress from an early age. Females that had undergone this epigenetic modification also behaved carelessly toward their own offspring.
However, if they were replaced by loving adoptive mothers, the offspring grew normally. This showed that genetics was flexible and also that mental experiences could produce changes in genes.
A revealing study on gene change through meditationA study on meditation was carried out at the University of Wisconsin-Madisonha (USA), with striking results. This is one of the pioneering works on the subject of changes in genes through meditation and is therefore of great value.
What the researchers did was to analyze the changes that occurred in the organism of a group of people who meditated versus those that occurred in another group that performed silent activities, but not associated with meditation.
In the end, they found that those who meditated had experienced modifications in the RIPK2 and COX2 genes, which are related to inflammatory processes.
The molecules that made these changes evident were analyzed at the Institute for Biomedical Research of Barcelona (IIBB-CSIC-IDIBAPS). In the end, Perla Kaliman, lead author of the article, pointed out that an epigenetic alteration in the genome was evidenced by meditation. However, she clarified, it is still too early to draw definitive conclusions.
Stress and meditationChronic stress is one of the factors that has been associated with a large number of chronic diseases and, of course, with a number of mood and mental disorders. It is also associated with aging, both cerebral and organic in general. And it is precisely the reduction of stress that is one of the most documented effects of meditation.
Based on the studies carried out, it is now possible to postulate the idea that stress produces epigenetic changes and that meditation can then reverse them.
Likewise, Susan Lee Smalley assures that people who achieve the so-called "mindfulness" provoke greater activity in the frontal cortex, which affects the sensation of serenity. If this is sustained for some time, genetic patterns of stress change.
It is important to note that epigenetic changes are modifications that "silence" some genetic factor. These are said to be the reason why DNA does not determine fate.
For example, a person can be born with a gene that predisposes him/her to cancer, but an epigenetic change can "silence" that gene. Hence the importance of all these studies and derived conclusions.
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