How Meditation Activates Our Healing Mechanisms

Coming up on this mini episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

We've known for a long time that meditators have thicker corpus callosums than non-meditators, but we weren't able to prove if it was causal or correlated.

But now we know that the longer you meditate, the thicker that thing becomes. Hi, I'm Kaya Perowwitz, one of the producers of the Doctor's Pharmacy podcast. Stress relief might be the most well-known benefit of a regular meditation practice, but the physiological benefits don't end there. Studies show that meditation can grow beneficial gray matter in in the brain, and it can provide the nervous system a rest five times deeper than sleep. In this mini episode, Dr. Hyman sits down with his meditation teacher and creator of the Ziva Technique, Emily Fletcher.

So let's talk about the science of this, because it's fascinating. It's not just that it helps you have better performance, better focus, better energy, better sleep, better sex, but there's some real biology behind it, which I don't think the monks who developed this or the what Buddha was thinking about. But it turns out that it's a very powerful healing tool. It's really meditation is medicine. Food is medicine. But I also have come to realize that meditation is medicine and that it can be applied for all sorts of issues that people have and that it actually creates a healing response in the body. Drugs actually shut off a pathway or block something. They interfere with your biology to stop a symptom. Meditation actually is a tool that helps to activate all the healing mechanisms. So what are those mechanisms that get activated?

Yeah, so when we get stressed, and what a lot of people don't know is that when that adrenaline and cortisol starts to flood our body, those chemicals are acidic in nature. So when your body becomes acidic, it becomes inflamed. And that inflammation, as you well know, is the basis of a lot of different chronic diseases. And so with meditation, not only are we getting rid of that adrenaline and cortisol, but we're starting to flood the brain with dopamine and serotonin, which are alkaline in nature. So we're changing the pH of the body. And if we look at why the human body reacts to stress in the way that it does, we really need to cut back in time a few thousand years. Say we're hunting and gathering in the woods. Saber-toothed tiger jumps out with the intent to kill. First thing that will happen is digestion will flood with acid because you can't afford to spend that energy digesting your food. You need all hands on deck to deal with a tiger. That same acid will seep onto your skin so you don't taste very good.

If you get bitten into by the tiger.

That's why stress can premature your aging because it makes your skin- Dr. It makes your blood clots. If you get bitten, you don't bleed to death. That's right. That's right. It makes your nervous poohs. It makes your bladder and bowels evacuate so you can be light on your feet. And it also dampens your immune system because who cares if you're gonna get cancer if you're about to be killed by a tiger?

Again, we need all hands on deck for this threat. It basically activates you to be a super duper power machine to run as fast as you can or fight as much as you can.

But if you're in that state all the time, it breaks down your system. That's right. It's not bad for us to get stressed. It is terrible for us to stay stressed. And because our modern demands are no longer predatory attacks When we get stressed when our boss yells at us, we never outrun our boss. We never fight, physically fight our boss. We're not as physical as we used to be. Sometimes you feel like punching. Oh yeah, sometimes you might feel like it. But this is why a lot of people think that exercise is their meditation. I hear this all the time.

Emily, I go to the gym and.

I run it off or I box it out. I go for a bike ride and clear my space. And look, exercise is great for you. And exercise is very good at getting rid of your stress in the now. But if you want to deal with.

A dog that barked in your face.

When you were 10 or your parents divorced when you were 12, we have to give the body rest. That was five. Sorry, tricky, right? And that stuff, it gets imprinted in our cells and we gotta rest in order to get rid of it.

Yeah.

So what are the other things that happen biologically?

Well, one thing that's a fun benefit that not that many people are talking about is the sex piece. There's a whole chapter in the book called From OM to OMG. And that's what's happening there is if your body's stressed again, procreation is not really top of mind. Like the meat suit is not that interested in making mini meat suits if it's afraid for its own survival and its own life. So, when you get your body out of that chronic fight or flight, you get out of sympathetic into parasympathetic, you can start to have some energy for.

Things like procreation or pleasure. You also mess up your hormones. Actually, they've done studies where they looked at guys who were watching their sports team and if their team lost, their testosterone went down. The stress of the loss of their team.

If their team won, their testosterone levels went up. Man. Which is pretty interesting. Now, see, this is a great reason for people to be rooting for their partner's teams. Yeah.

And infertility is a huge issue. You write about it in your book, and a lot of work has been done on this at Harvard and other places where people just couldn't get pregnant and they start meditating. Be mindful.

Yeah, we have a bunch of Ziva babies right now, myself included. I was 39. I got pregnant on my first try. There's a woman in the book who was 42 when she came to me. Her doctor, she was not even a candidate for IVF. And then she started meditating, and two years later at 44, she went back to her doctors and she had the fertility markers of an 18 year old. So, we oftentimes conflate maternal health with maternal age. And so, a lot of people think, well, as I age, my fertility goes down, but that's not always the case. If you are getting healthier, it's possible to a degree, to a point, you could become more fertile.

Absolutely. That improves your immune system. It actually lengthens your telomeres, which are these little end caps on your genes, on your chromosomes that determine your aging. So literally you can kind of reverse the biology of aging through meditation.

-And this is some fascinating new science. And I read the Telomere Effect, which I think is so exciting. But we've all seen it. We've all seen that 60-year-old yogi who's been meditating and doing yoga her whole life and has the most glowing skin and bright, clear eyes and is super strong. And then we go back to our high school reunion and someone's been drinking and sitting on the couch every day. And you're like, whoa, you look 30 years older than you are. So we know that stress ages us expeditiously. proof of that, take a look at any president the day they take office and that same president four years later. So we know stress is aging us, but it's, but now we have the proof.

Yeah. And then even stem cells, we're all talking about stem cell injections and stem cells, but meditation actually improves stem cells. And also it, it seems to have the ability to rewire your brain, like you were saying, to increase the connections to improve the connectivity of your brain, which helps you learn and focus.

Yeah. Neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change itself. And I would also say strengthened something called the corpus callosum, which is that thin white strip that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain. And we've known for a long time that meditators have thicker corpus callosums than non-meditators, but we weren't able to prove if it was causal or correlated. But now we know that the longer you meditate, the thicker that thing becomes, which cool party trick, but why would I want a fat corpus callosum?

Well, everybody should, because it's quite literally the bridge between your critical mind and your creative mind, your masculine and your feminine. The goal of meditation is not to stop our thoughts, but rather to turn down the volume on our excitability factor. This enables us to meet things directly and listen better, both to other people and to ourselves. Ultimately, meditation is like any other skill. You've got to make the time and effort, but it gets easier once you make it a daily habit and begin seeing results. Thanks for tuning in to this mini episode of the Doctors Pharmacy Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with friends and family. Until next time.

Hi everyone.

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make.

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