Trevor Ponder Human Memory

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Meditation is a mind-body practice in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). There are many types of meditation, most of which originated in ancient religious and spiritual traditions. Generally, a person who is meditating uses certain techniques, such as a specific posture, focused attention, and an open attitude toward distractions. Meditation may be practiced for many reasons, such as to increase calmness and physical relaxation, to improve psychological balance, to cope with illness, or to enhance overall wellness. This Backgrounder provides a general introduction to meditation and suggests some resources for more information.

Key Points

• People practice meditation for a number of health-related purposes.
• It is not fully known what changes occur in the body during meditation; whether they influence health; and, if so, how. Research is under way to find out more about meditation’s effects, how it works, and diseases and conditions for which it may be most helpful.
• Tell your health care providers about any complementary and alternative practices you use. Give them a full picture of what you do to manage your health. This will help ensure coordinated and safe care.

Overview

The term meditation refers to a group of techniques, such as mantra meditation, relaxation response, mindfulness meditation, and Zen Buddhist meditation. Most meditative techniques started in Eastern religious or spiritual traditions. These techniques have been used by many different cultures throughout the world for thousands of years. Today, many people use meditation outside of its traditional religious or cultural settings, for health and wellness purposes.

In meditation, a person learns to focus attention. Some forms of meditation instruct the practitioner to become mindful of thoughts, feelings, and sensations and to observe them in a nonjudgmental way. This practice is believed to result in a state of greater calmness and physical relaxation, and psychological balance. Practicing meditation can change how a person relates to the flow of emotions and thoughts in the mind.

Most types of meditation have four elements in common:

• A quiet location. Meditation is usually practiced in a quiet place with as few distractions as possible. This can be particularly helpful for beginners.
• A specific, comfortable posture. Depending on the type being practiced, meditation can be done while sitting, lying down, standing, walking, or in other positions.
• A focus of attention. Focusing one’s attention is usually a part of meditation. For example, the meditator may focus on a mantra (a specially chosen word or set of words), an object, or the sensations of the breath. Some forms of meditation involve paying attention to whatever is the dominant content of consciousness.
• An open attitude. Having an open attitude during meditation means letting distractions come and go naturally without judging them. When the attention goes to distracting or wandering thoughts, they are not suppressed; instead, the meditator gently brings attention back to the focus. In some types of meditation, the meditator learns to “observe” thoughts and emotions while meditating.

Meditation used as CAM is a type of mind-body medicine. Generally, mind-body medicine focuses on:

• The interactions among the brain/mind, the rest of the body, and behavior.
• The ways in which emotional, mental, social, spiritual, and behavioral factors can directly affect health.

Uses of Meditation for Health in the United States

A 2007 national Government survey that asked about CAM use in a sample of 23,393 U.S. adults found that 9.4 percent of respondents (representing more than 20 million people) had used meditation in the past 12 months-compared with 7.6 percent of respondents (representing more than 15 million people) in a similar survey conducted in 2002. The 2007 survey also asked about CAM use in a sample of 9,417 children; 1 percent (representing 725,000 children) had used meditation in the past 12 months.

People use meditation for various health problems, such as:

• Anxiety
• Pain
• Depression
• Stress
• Insomnia
• Physical or emotional symptoms that may be associated with chronic illnesses (such as heart disease, HIV/AIDS, and cancer) and their treatment.

Meditation is also used for overall wellness.

Examples of Meditation Practices

Mindfulness meditation and Transcendental Meditation (also known as TM) are two common forms of meditation. NCCAM-sponsored research projects are studying both of these types of meditation.

Mindfulness meditation is an essential component of Buddhism. In one common form of mindfulness meditation, the meditator is taught to bring attention to the sensation of the flow of the breath in and out of the body. The meditator learns to focus attention on what is being experienced, without reacting to or judging that experience. This is seen as helping the meditator learn to experience thoughts and emotions in normal daily life with greater balance and acceptance.

The TM technique is derived from Hindu traditions. It uses a mantra (a word, sound, or phrase repeated silently) to prevent distracting thoughts from entering the mind. The goal of TM is to achieve a state of relaxed awareness.

Sources:  National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Lifestyle for Better Memory meditation

Adding a moderate, but not high, amount of walnuts to an otherwise healthy diet may help older individuals improve performance on tasks that require motor and behavioral skills, according to an animal model study by Agricultural Research Service (ARS)-funded scientists. Walnuts contain polyphenols and other antioxidants and essential fatty acids.

The study was conducted by researchers at Tufts University in Boston, Mass.

The aging brain undergoes many changes that can result in altered or impaired neuronal functioning. Such disruption can be attributed in part to alterations in “synaptic plasticity,” or the ability of the connections between neurons to change in strength and function, and also by increased oxidative damage to neural tissue. In aged rodents, these impairments are seen as poor performance on age-sensitive tests of balance, coordination, and “spatial” working memory.

For the study, weight-matched, aged rats were randomly assigned to one of four diet groups. For eight weeks, the rats were fed special chow mixes that contained either 2 percent, 6 percent or 9 percent walnuts-or no walnuts-before undergoing motor and memory tests. For comparison, the 6 percent walnut study diet is equivalent to a human eating 1 ounce, or about 7 to 9 walnuts, a day. That counts as both a 2-ounce equivalent from the “meat and beans group” and 2 teaspoons toward a daily allowance of dietary oil, as described at MyPyramid.gov.

The study found that in aged rats, the diets containing 2 percent or 6 percent walnuts were able to improve age-related motor and cognitive shortfalls, while the 9 percent walnut diet impaired reference memory. Walnuts, eaten in moderation, appear to be among other foods containing polyphenols and bioactive substances that exhibit multiple effects on neural tissue, according to the researchers.

Memory and Food memory food

Zinc deficiency was first described in Egyptian and Iranian adolescents more than 30 years ago and continues to be a common health problem for children living in both developing and developed countries. As many as 70 percent of school-aged children in Thailand and 34 percent of Chinese preschool children may be zinc deficient. Zinc deficiency in the United States is much less common, with studies showing that about 6 percent of girls and 10 percent of boys are zinc deficient. Such deficiency is known to impair immune function and to retard growth in children. But its impact on brain function and mental performance has been demonstrated only recently.

Zinc is known to be essential for brain development and function in animals. When mice, rats and primates are deprived of zinc during critical periods of brain development, they exhibit many behavioral deficits, particularly in memory, activity, aggression and socialization. Recent work has shown that even mild zinc deprivation of pre-adolescent monkeys results in deficits in both memory and attention. Severe zinc deprivation of adult animals has also impaired their behavior.

When adult men were treated with an agent that removes zinc from the body, they experienced more mood swings and deficits in visual perception and verbal memory. In a highly controlled, 6-month study at the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center we found that men with low zinc intakes had faster, but less accurate performance on tasks measuring verbal and nonverbal memory. In another controlled study at our Center, we found that restricted zinc intakes caused men to perform more poorly on 9 of 15 cognitive and psychomotor tasks. On the other hand, taking a 30-milligram (mg) supplement of zinc each day improved visual memory in a study done with women.

The early studies of severely and moderately zinc-deficient adolescents in Egypt and Iran found “mental disturbances” and “mental lethargy” among those children. Subsequent studies of mental performance of children at risk of zinc deficiency have yielded inconsistent results. In Canada and Guatemala, young school children given an extra 10 mg of zinc daily had no significant improvement in mental performance. But a study of more than 1,000 school-aged children in China conducted by the our Center had different results. Those supplemented with 20 mg of zinc daily showed more improvement in hand-eye coordination, attention and reasoning than the children given a supplement containing most of the essential vitamins and minerals except zinc and four other minerals known to interfere with its absorption. This was the first intervention study to demonstrate in children a relationship between zinc intake and cognition and psychomotor function.

More recently, scientists found similar effects with zinc supplementation of school-aged Mexican-American children living in southwest Texas. These findings suggest that zinc supplementation most likely improves attention, reasoning and psychomotor function, such as hand-eye coordination. It appears that we are now beginning to uncover the role of zinc for brain function and mental performance of children, and the results of this detective work clearly will have very important implications for the world’s population with suboptimal zinc intakes and others who are at risk for zinc deficiency. This work also is another example of the important work on mineral nutrition and human health and performance being conducted at Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center.

Good sources of zinc are: oysters, beef, pork, liver, dried beans and peas, whole grains, fortified cereals, nuts, milk, cocoa and poultry.

Memory and Food memory food, zinc