健康生活:深度冥想的神奇效用

Murali Doraiswamy, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., says it isn't clearly understood how meditation works on the body. Some forms of meditation have been found to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which stimulates the body's relaxation response, improves blood supply, slows down heart rate and breathing and increases digestive activity, he said. It also slows down the release of stress hormones, such as cortisol.
北卡罗莱纳州达勒姆的杜克大学医学中心(Duke University Medical Center)精神病学教授穆拉利•多雷斯瓦米(Murali Doraiswamy)说，目前还不清楚冥想是如何作用于身体的。有些形式的冥想已被发现能激活副交感神经系统，而这又会刺激身体的放松反应，改善血液供给、降低心率、放缓呼吸并促进消化活动。多雷斯瓦米还称，冥想也能减缓皮质醇等压力激素的分泌。

Dr. Doraiswamy says he recommends meditation for people with depression, panic or anxiety disorders, ongoing stress, or for general health maintenance of brain alertness and cardiovascular health.
多雷斯瓦米说，他向那些患有抑郁症、恐慌症、焦虑症、长期饱受压力折磨的人，以及那些注重大脑养生与心血管健康的人都推荐冥想疗法。

Thousands of studies have been published that look at meditation, Dr. Doraiswamy said. Of these, about 500 have been clinical trials testing meditation for various ailments, but only about 40 trials have been long-term studies. It isn't known whether there is an optimal amount of time for meditating that is most effective. And, it hasn't been conclusively shown that the practice causes people to live longer or prevents them from getting certain chronic diseases.
多雷斯瓦米说，成千上万种针对冥想的研究成果都已发表。这其中，约有500项研究针对各种疾病进行了冥想疗法的临床试验，但仅仅只有约40例试验经过了长期的研究。目前还不清楚多长时间的冥想活动效果最佳。而对于此类活动能否延长人们的寿命或使人们远离某些慢性病，至今仍尚无定论。

Some short-term studies have found meditation can improve cognitive abilities such as attention and memory, said Dr. Doraiswamy. Using imaging, scientists have shown that meditation can improve the functional performance of specific circuits in the brain and may reduce age-related shrinkage of several brain centers, particularly those that may be vulnerable in disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.
多雷斯瓦米还称，有些短期研究已发现，冥想能提高如注意力和记忆力这样的认知能力。科学家利用成像技术发现，冥想能改善人们大脑中某些特定回路的功能特性，还可能减少随着年龄增长而出现的大脑中枢萎缩状况，特别是对于那些容易患上老年痴呆症(Alzheimer's disease，又称阿兹海默症)等病症的人更是如此。

In a study published last year in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, African-Americans with heart disease who practiced Transcendental Meditation regularly were 48% less likely to have a heart attack or stroke, or to die, than those who attended a health-education class. Among the meditation group, there were 20 such occurrences, compared with 32 in the control group. The study, which ran for more than five years, involved about 200 people.
美国心脏协会(American Heart Association)《循环》(Circulation)期刊上去年发表的一项名为《心血管特性和效果》(Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes)的研究表明，在患有心脏病的非洲裔美国人中，那些经常练习超觉冥想的人突发心脏病或中风、死亡的风险比那些参加健康教育课的人要低48%。在冥想小组中出现了20个这样的病发案例，而在实验对照组中，这一数据为32。该研究持续的时间超过了五年，总共涉及约200人。

Recent research found that meditation can result in molecular changes affecting the length of telomeres, a protective covering at the end of chromosomes that gets shorter as people age. The study involved 40 family caregivers of dementia patients. Half of the participants meditated briefly on a daily basis and the other half listened to relaxing music for 12 minutes a day. The eight-week study found that people who meditated showed a 43% improvement in telomerase activity, an enzyme that regulates telomere length, compared with a 3.7% gain in the group listening to music. The participants meditating also showed improved mental and cognitive functioning and lower levels of depression compared with the control group. The pilot study was published in January in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.
最近的研究发现，冥想能引起影响端粒长度的分子变化。端粒是染色体末端的一种保护覆盖物，它会随着人的年事增高而变得越来越短。这项研究涉及40名照料痴呆症患者的家庭医护人员。有一半的参与者每天都会进行简短的冥想，而另一半的人则会每天聆听12分钟放松身心的音乐。这项持续了八周的研究发现，那些冥想者的端粒 ──端粒 是一种修复端粒长度的 ──活性提高了43%，而听音乐的那组人只提高了3.7%。与实验对照组相比，参与冥想的人还表现出更强的心理和认知功能、更低的抑郁程度。这项试验性研究于一月份发表在《国际老年精神病学杂志》(International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry)上。

Government-funded research also is exploring meditation's effect on dieting and depression.
由政府资助的研究也正在探索冥想对节食和抑郁的影响。