Did you know that rescent medical research now shows that people with chronic stress, anxiety, and depression age faster, as much as six times faster? Catch the latest podcast of AWAKE with Dr. Jay Kumar on the Doug Stephan Good Day Show, as we explore some simple things you can do to increase your longevity, health, and happiness!
AWAKE & ENJOY!
Dr. Jay Kumar
www.drjaykumar.com
Facebook - Dr. Jay Kumar
Twitter - docjaykumar
Let's begin by exploring the aging process from a biological perspective. While many might regard aging as an external condition of looking older, in actuality physical aging is the biological result of the inability for your cells to replicate and produce new ones as the body advances over time. One of the most startling and revolutionary ideas to come out of the medical sciences is the discovery of telomeres, an enzyme in your genes that regulates cellular division and, in turn, determines your length of life. In essence, the length of your telomeres now appear to act as your body's natural biological clock. When under constant stress, your biological clock speeds up, resulting in the shortening of telomeres. On the contrary, when you're more calm and relaxed telomeres appear to extend their length, thus slowing down the body's biological clock. Let’s take a closer look at how telomeres function, how stress accelerates their decay, what you can do to slow down their eventual breakdown, and ways to live a more healthy and long life.
As you grow older, your hair turns gray, your organs begin to work less, your bones become weaker, and your body generally ages, all of which now appear to be the result of the shortening of the telomeres in your cells. So what exactly are telomeres? In every one of your genes, there exist 26 pairs of chromosomes that are capped off by telomeres. A nice analogy is to visualize your chromosome as a shoelace with a cap at the end of the lace as the telomere. Over the course of time due to natural wear and tear these caps at the end of your shoelaces begin to fray. In a similar manner, the telomeres that act as caps at the end of your chromosomes also begin to wear down and shorten. In the emerging medical field of psychoneuroimmunology, the intimate connection of the mind, brain, and stress with our immune system and aging is being greatly understood. In essence, a growing medical body of evidence concludes that stress advances the shortening of your telomeres, which in turn prevents cellular reproduction and eventually accelerating the aging process.
This remarkable finding regarding the effects of stress on telomere shortening and age acceleration actually earned Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and her colleagues the Nobel prize for medicine in 2009. Her study examined people exposed to chronic stress, depression, and anxiety and concluded that for every one chronological year of aging, the shortening of these people’s telomeres accelerated by as much as 600%. Basically, in just one year the aging process of these people amounted to six years of biological aging! Watch full video here
So before you resign yourself to hopelessness and despair, I now have some good news! Another study by Blackburn and her colleagues indicates that you actually not only can halt the shortening and deterioration of telomeres, but possibly increase their length, i.e. slowing down the body's aging process! Techniques such as meditation, regular exercise, and other forms of centering that trigger the body's natural relaxation response all appear to slow the aging process by increasing the length of your telomeres! So it might just be that the secret for eternal youth doesn't reside in a bottle of anti-aging cream, with an injection of Botox, or in cosmetic surgery. The key to eternal health and longevity might just be learning how to relax! Now that's some good news worth living!
In the apt and true words of the famous centenarian and eternally happy comedian, George Burns, “If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn't ask me, I'd still have to say it."
Keep on Living Your Light with abundant health, happiness, and long life!
Dr. Jay Kumar
www.drjaykumar.com
Facebook - Dr. Jay Kumar
Twitter - docjaykumar
We've all heard the phrase "take a breather." So, it now turns out that there's a medical fact behind that saying! Our brains naturally have a "relaxation response" that we can tap into through the breath!
Catch the latest podcast of AWAKE with Dr. Jay Kumar on the Doug Stephan Good Day Show and learn what the latest research in neuroscience provides for you to experience greater health, cope with stress, and enjoy more calm in your life.
Remember to relax, breathe, and enjoy life!
Dr. Jay Kumar
Facebook – Dr. Jay Kumar
Twitter – docjaykumar
Brain Waves and the Power of Attention
Neuropsychology now believes that the human brain allows us to process two distinct types of attention. The first is a “voluntary or direct” attention that enables us to focus our thoughts and neural energy to tasks that require our direct concentration, e.g. writing this article, watching a movie, or reading a book. The other type is an “involuntary or indirect” attention that our brain does with little or no effort, e.g. watching a sunset, meditating, having a casual conversation, or dancing.
Additionally, there are corresponding brain waves associated with these two types of attention. When our brains are engaged in voluntary, direct attention requiring focused concentration, beta waves tend to be predominant. On the contrary, our brains produce alpha waves when we experience involuntary, indirect attention requiring no fixed awareness. The two other brain waves, theta and delta, are predominant during sleep with theta waves occurring in deep-sleep and delta waves during REM dream-sleep.
While having our brain in beta-wave state is important, as it helps us to focus on daily tasks, unfortunately, many of us live a typical life with our brains disproportionately in the stressful beta-wave state and barely enough time in the healing and regenerative alpha-wave state. Unlike theta and delta waves that occur predominantly in sleep, the healing and regenerative properties of alpha waves are produced only when we are conscious and awake.
In our current technologically driven world, we are on average bombarded with 4,000 bits of information/second and about 700 ads a day. The brain is overwhelmed with all this sensory data, as it requires our attention to be in “voluntary or direct” mode and our brains to reside in the constantly stressful beta-waves for the majority of our day while awake. Rarely, do we take the time in our waking state for the brain to go into the calming, soothing alpha-waves and into “involuntary and indirect” attention.
Mind-Body Connection
In the growing medical field of psycho-neuro-immunology (PNI), there appears to be a correlation between the various brain waves with our health and wellbeing. When our brains are highly amped up in focused direct attention for long hours at a time, we live our day predominantly in a beta-wave state accompanied with the release of cortisol, the stress-hormone that eventually may lead to chronic anxiety, illness and disease. The good news is that involuntary, indirect attention produces the alpha-waves that produce beta-endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin, neurotransmitters that enable us to become relaxed, calm, and centered when we’re in stress throughout our day. This evolutionary mechanism wired into our neurology is known as the relaxation response. This built-in relaxation response suggests that our brains and nervous systems enable us to experience a state of calm and relaxation in moments of stress and anxiety.
Natrue as Healer
So can you guess what’s one of the easiest ways for us to enhance the alpha-waves of calm and centeredness and to stimulate our natural relaxation response? The answer, of course, is NATURE! Another emerging field of study, known as ecopsychology, advocates that even though the human brain is currently shaped for our modern and technologically-driven environment, its original function was to interact with and respond to the natural world in which it evolved over the millennia. In essence, the human brain is literally “hard-wired” to BE IN NATURE, as being in nature is natural for the brain.
According to this field of study, human beings have an instinctual biological need to connect with nature, something known as the biophilic instinct, a concept advanced by the Harvard biologist Edward Wilson. The idea is that humans and the human brain evolved over millennia as beings deeply enmeshed with and inexorably linked to the intricacies of nature. Wilson describes biophilia as the "innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes." Even though our human brain has recently adapted to an environment of technology and sensory stimulation, we each still have this affinity for nature ingrained in our genotype and in our neurobiology. This evolutionary connection to nature activates in the part of the brain known as the insula, the area that governs our internal feelings and sensations. So when we dance, do yoga meditate, focus on our breath, swim, run, or are in nature we begin to connect to the internal terrain of our body. The insula gauges how we’re feeling and what we’re experiencing within our body and mind in the present moment.
Relaxation Response
This ability to tap into the relaxation response through nature appears also to have a tremendous impact on our health and wellbeing. Scientific studies have already begun and continue to demonstrate the powerful healing aspects of nature. Dr. Ulrich published one of the earliest studies in 1984 Science, in which he noticed that patients who were recovering from surgery healed more quickly and required less pain medication when placed in hospital rooms that had views of nature, versus patients placed in rooms facing brick walls. Ulrich conjectured that this acceleration in healing was perhaps a result of the brain connecting to nature. It appears that when we are immersed in nature, our brains go automatically into the involuntary, indirect attention-mode that is connected with the healing alpha-wave brain state. Research suggests that even a short walk in the park during your lunch break, touching a tree on your walk to the office, or literally “stopping to smell the roses” once in a while is beneficial, as it is an evolutionary trait that our brains evolved to do. Furthermore, even passive contact with nature such as viewing an open pasture in your car or hearing the sound of birds chirping from your window can have the same powerful benefits as an actual immersion in nature.
When the brain’s alpha and beta waves are equally in balance throughout our waking day, we experience psycho-physiological coherence, a deep and profound state of integration of the body, mind, and brain. The longer we can produce coherence, the stronger our immune system, our health, and wellbeing. Being in nature, again, is one of the easiest and most effective ways to cultivate this balance of the brain waves and to switch into our involuntary, calm mode of attention. So it appears that science is beginning to validate that nature truly has a profound calming and soothing effect on the mind and our neurobiology. So what better time than spring to get out in nature and experience its healing power! As the poet Thoreau beautifully states, “I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.”
Have a joyous and beautiful spring as you continue Living Your Light®
Dr. Jay Kumar
www.drjaykumar.com
Facebook – Dr. Jay Kumar
Twitter – docjaykumar
We've all heard the phrase "take a breather." So, it now turns out that there's a medical fact behind that saying! Our brains naturally have a "relaxation response" tahat we can tap into through the breath! Learn what the latest research in neuroscience provides for you to experience greater health, cope with stress, and enjoy more calm in your life. Catch the latest podcast of AWAKE with Dr. Jay Kumar on the Doug Stephan Good Day Show.
Remember to relax, breathe, and enjoy life!
Dr. Jay Kumar
www.drjaykumar.com
Facebook – Dr. Jay Kumar
Twitter – docjaykumar
"NEUROSCIENCE & CONSIOUSNESS" PREZI LINK
Dr. Jay Kumar
www.drjaykumar.com
Facebook – Dr. Jay Kumar
Twitter – docjaykumar