After much skepticism scientific research confirms: the use of oriental meditation techniques can prevent and cure many diseases.

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In recent years, meditation has not only dealt with "psychological well-being" and has entered hospitals with many applications: from pain control to immunology, from the treatment of hypertension to the slowing of cerebral decline.

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### IN THE PRINCIPLE
It all started about thirty years ago when [Jon Kabat Zinn](https://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/about-us/people/2-meet-our-faculty/kabat-zinn-profile/) founded the [Center for Mindfulness](https://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/mindfulness-based-programs/mbsr-courses/about-mbsr/history-of-mbsr/) at the University of Worcester (UK) and began using meditation as a therapeutic tool. A tool that is anything but easy to propose: in the frenetic contemporary life, meditation in Eastern tradition is difficult. But its advantages are no longer under discussion: it improves attention, cognitive skills and memory, reduces anxiety and depressive symptoms.


[At Brown University in Providence (USA)](https://news.brown.edu/articles/2013/02/mindfulness) ,Catherine Kerr uses meditation for her analgesic effect: she claims that it works like a kind of knob that regulates the perception of unpleasant sensations. In 2010, she showed that, if you focus on the sensations of the left hand, the brain "map" corresponding to that hand records a significant fall in the amplitude of the waves that filter the sensations, allowing only those that exceed a certain threshold.

If instead the focus is on another part of the body, the waves return to normal. The following year, using [magnetoencephalography](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography), a brain imaging technique, showed that the rhythms of these waves in the brain are correlated with sensory attention and that the ability to regulate these waves in the [cerebral cortex](https://www.thoughtco.com/anatomy-of-the-brain-cerebral-cortex-373217) is greater in the subjects capable of meditation.

In other words, meditating allows greater control over the sensory system and allows you to choose what focus your attention on. Result? Meditation causes what you do not want to hear in the background, for example - chronic pains.

[Fadel Zeidan, a neurobiologist at Wake Forest Baptist University (USA)](http://amp.timeinc.net/time/4108442/mindfulness-meditation-pain-management), has even quantified the effect of meditation on the analgesic power of morphine: 
>"It could reduce the intensity of pain by 40% and its unpleasantness by 57%. of only 25% obtained with morphine, "says Zeidan.

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### INFLAMMATORY
Many [cardiovascular](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiovascular_disease) and [neurodegenerative diseases](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodegeneration) are linked to a state of inflammation of which neither the origin nor the cure is known: if it were possible to reduce the inflammatory state, perhaps it could be prevented. It is the road traveled almost by accident by [Steven Cole, of the University of California Los Angeles (Ucla)](http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/meditation-reduces-loneliness-237463) : he wanted to study if the meditation was able to reduce the feeling of loneliness of the elderly, a condition that increases the risk of heart disease, [Alzheimer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alzheimer%27s_disease), depression and even premature death.

So he put about forty subjects in meditation half an hour a day for 8 weeks. But he soon discovered that this "therapy" was not limited to affecting psychological well-being: meditation also reduced the activation of inflammation-related genes and thus reduced inflammation itself.

The step is also short to evaluate the effects on the immune system. Meditation appears to be effective even on a particular type of white blood cell, [the CD4 T lymphocytes](https://aidsinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv-aids/glossary/113/cd4-t-lymphocyte). They are considered the brains of the immune system because they coordinate the activity of the defending army when the body suffers an infectious attack. But it is also the cells that devastates the HIV virus, responsible for AIDS, weakening the immune response of patients.

In 2008, [David Creswell, of the Councins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology of Ucla](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2725018/) , meditated for 8 weeks a group of 24 HIV-positive subjects (ie, infected, but not AIDS patients), comparing them with an equivalent control group. In subjects in meditation the reduction of CD4 T lymphocytes was lower than in the control group: the effect was the same in all 12 meditators, both those in antiretroviral therapy, and those who were not.

Meditation is a cure-all in many fields. It seems to be effective even against colds: [Bruce Barrett, of the University of Wisconsin (USA)](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1671543), studied meditation on 51 individuals and calculated that those doing meditation have a 40-50% reduction in working days lost due to acute respiratory infections , including influence, compared to those who do not meditate. The duration of the disease is less and the symptoms are milder.

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### CHARACTER

About 30 years ago [Herbert Benson](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Benson), a cardiologist from the Massachusetts general hospital in Boston (USA) and founder of the Mind / Body Medical Institute , began to use relaxation and meditation in this type of patient.

Other cardiologists like [Randall Zusman](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5291361), director of the Massachusetts general hospital hypertension program, did not believe in the effectiveness of these methods and continued to prescribe antihypertensive drugs. Since 2008, Zusman has also changed course and now focuses on meditation and the correct lifestyle.
An experiment on 60 hypertensive patients convinced him: in 40 meditation had reduced hypertension so as to allow a drastic decline in the intake of drugs. But It is not always easy to make people stay still and silent for half an hour. But it works.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JAJ87Dwmx2E
Video From YouTube

Image Source: [1](http://www.care2.com/greenliving/5-ways-to-teach-kids-how-to-meditate.html), [2](https://fractalenlightenment.com/32355/spirituality/an-introduction-to-yoga-and-meditation-for-children) ,[3](https://www.i-rama.com/kids-meditation/) , [4](http://www.viralnovelty.net/key-benefits-meditation-practice-schools/)