Meditation may help prevent brain aging. Those are findings of new UCLA study which showed that people who meditate have less age-related atrophy in the brain’s gray matter, the tissue involved in carrying signals from the brain to the rest of the body.
Scientists compared 50 people who were long-term meditators with 50 non-practitioners. Each group in the study was made up of 28 men and 22 women ranging in age from 24 to 77. Those who meditated had been doing so for four to 46 years, with an average of 20 years.
Using brain scans, they found people in both groups showed a loss of gray matter as they aged. But among those who meditated, the volume of gray matter did not decline as much as it did among those didn't practice meditation.
Researchers were surprised at the magnitude of difference, said study co-author Dr. Florian Kurth. “We actually observed a widespread effect of meditation that encompassed regions throughout the entire brain,” he added.
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