Study suggests meditation can inhibit aging

A research center/Buddhist retreat in Northern Colorado has been conducted trials in 2007 attempting to find links between regular mediation and observable significant health benefits.  The project, dubbed Shamatha, was done at the Shambhala Mountain Center over the course of two three-month periods and cost around 4 million USD, partly funded by private organizations. After several years of analysis and number crunching, the results from the study are just beginning to be published, and initial reports suggest dramatic results.

The report notes that participants in the study had significantly higher telomerase activity. Telomeres play a key role in the aging of cells, acting like a clock that limits their lifespan. When a cell divides, the telomeres get shorter, unless an enzyme called telomerase can build them back up. When a telomere gets too short, the cell cannot replicate and thus dies. Psychologist Elissa Epel from UC San Francisco said "If the increase in telomerase is sustained long enough, it's logical to infer that this group would develop more stable and possibly longer telomeres over time." The Shamatha project suggest that there is a definite link between meditation and cellular aging.

This article was interesting to me because it reads and feels very similar to articles we see here in the West about some new miracle cure all that was just confirmed by some scientific institute or another and how it can drastically improve your quality of life with little effort on your end. The human desire for easy fixes to complex problems shows through here, and just acai berry can get you down to a size 2, meditation can regenerate dying cells and chromosomes. That's not to say that there isn't credence to this study, but often these sorts of things are blown out of proportion. As to what it says about Taiwanese media, I believe it shows that as soon as a country hits a certain standard of living, luxury healthcare and posh science arise, which is telling about the standard of living in Taiwan.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2011/04/26/2003501700/1