The Health Effects of Tension and Relaxation
(Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease)
Tension damages every organ and system in your body. It directly or indirectly contributes to most diseases. Mindbody relaxation has been medically proven to help treat high blood pressure, migraines, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, psoriasis, asthma, and cardiac arrhythmias to name a few conditions.(1)
On this page you'll learn:
- How tension causes illness.
- How relaxation prevents and treats illness.
How Tension Causes Illness
Tension causes premature aging of DNA. The link between tension and disease was first proven in a study at the University of California at San Francisco. The study showed that mothers who have chronically ill children and are under high stress have more damage to their DNA than mothers with healthy children.(2)
The study looked at thirty-nine mothers who had chronically ill children and compared them to a similar group of mothers with healthy children. Both groups were matched in every other way (age, weight, etc.). The study showed that the mothers with chronically ill children had DNA that was prematurely older than the mothers with healthy children. In other words, tension causes aging at the cellular level.
How did the researchers know that the DNA was prematurely older? If you're interested in the biology behind the answer, you can learn more in this paragraph. If you're not interested, just skip to the next paragraph. The lifespan of a cell is determined by a special strand of DNA called a "telomere" that caps the end of each chromosome. Each time a cell divides, part of the telomere is used up, which makes telomeres act like molecular countdown clocks. When a telomere gets below a certain length, the chromosome becomes unstable, and the cell dies. The study showed that the mothers with chronically ill children had significantly shorter telomeres, which means significantly older DNA, than the mothers with healthy children.
The implications of this discovery are huge. If the cells that line your blood vessels prematurely age due to tension, you may end up with heart disease. If the cells of your immune system prematurely age, you will be more susceptible to everything from pneumonia to cancer. If the collagen cells that support your face prematurely age, your skin will lose its elasticity and wrinkle. In other words, this one study explains the many diverse consequences of tension.
Can reducing tension reduce disease? The answer is yes. Relaxation helps your body help itself, which is the most powerful form of medicine. Here are some examples.
Reduce the Risk of Heart Disease with Mindbody Relaxation and Meditation
Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the developed world. One study in the British Medical Journal looked at a group of 192 men and women.(4) The participants were randomly divided into two groups. Both groups were given information on lowering blood pressure, reducing animal fats, and stopping smoking. One group was also given an eight-week course on mindbody relaxation.
After only eight weeks, the mindbody relaxation group had significantly lower blood pressure. But this was not just a temporary effect. After eight months the relaxation group still had lower blood pressure. What was even more impressive was that four years later, not only did they have lower blood pressure, they also had a significantly lower rate of heart disease and fewer fatal heart attacks.
The simple and inexpensive act of mindbody relaxation significantly reduced the risk of the number one cause of death in the developed world. The personal, social, and economic consequences of this are enormous.
Reverse Hardening of the Arteries
Another study showed that relaxation can reverse arteriosclerosis. The results were published in the American Heart Association journal, Stroke.(5) The study looked at sixty patients and measured the hardening and clogging of their arteries using ultrasound.
The patients were then randomly divided into two groups. One group received health education, while the other group was also taught how to relax. Nine months later, the hardening and clogging of their arteries was measured again. Amazingly, the relaxation group had actually reduced the hardening and clogging of their arteries. They had less arteriosclerosis than the non-relaxation group.
How can mindbody relaxation reverse hardening of the arteries? It can happen on many levels. Relaxation reduces stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol that are known to contribute to arteriosclerosis. Relaxation can also reduce blood pressure that causes hardening of the arteries. To understand how this might happen, you have to realize that you can temporarily increase your blood pressure by holding your breath.
Definitely don't try this, but if you hold your breath and tighten your chest muscles as if you're having a temper tantrum, your blood pressure will rise. The effect happens because when you hold your breath, you increase the pressure in your chest, which increases your blood pressure.
Now imagine if you did that a little bit with every breath. Each time you don’t breathe from your abdomen and you don't let your chest relax between breaths, you’re constantly making your heart work harder. Over time that little difference can have a large cumulative effect on your blood pressure, causing hardening of your arteries.
Incredibly, this study showed that the reverse is also true. If you breathe from your abdomen and let your chest muscles relax between breaths, you will lower your blood pressure and reverse hardening of the arteries.
Strengthen Your Immune System
The strength of your immune system can be measured by the strength of your antibody response to a vaccine. One study looked at forty-one volunteers who were randomly divided into two groups.(6) One group was given an eight-week relaxation course, while the control group was not. At the end of the eight weeks, both groups were given an influenza vaccine. The results were that the relaxation group had a significantly greater antibody response, and therefore had a stronger immune system, than the non-relaxation group.
Increase Life Expectancy with Mindbody Relaxation
Relaxation not only reduces the risk of heart disease, it also reduces the risk of death from all diseases and increases life expectancy according to a study published in the American Journal of Cardiology.(7) The study randomly divided 202 patients into two groups. Both groups received standard health education and high blood pressure treatment, while one group was also taught how to relax. Both groups were followed for eight years.
During those eight years, the relaxation group had 30 percent fewer deaths from cardiovascular disease and 23 percent fewer deaths from all causes. To put this in perspective, a medical treatment is considered successful if it can reduce heart disease by 10 percent.
To reduce heart disease by 30 percent is remarkable. To reduce overall deaths by almost a quarter is amazing.Learn More
In Chapter 14, "Improve Your Health" you'll learn:
- How mindbody relaxation can complement standard medical therapy
You'll also learn:
- The underlying causes of tension in greater detail
- A simple but effective relaxation technique to let go of tension and change your life
- The key to relaxing your body and mind
- Simple breathing techniques that will help you let go of tension quickly
- How to stay focused and deal with distractions
- How and why relaxation works
- The science and psychology behind relaxation
- How relaxation feels
- Answers to frequently asked questions about relaxation and meditation
- Hints to help you overcome common obstacles
- A one-month relaxation program that will help you integrate relaxation into your life
- How to reduce anxiety and improve your sleep.
