It may seem unlikely,but a small and growing body of evidence suggests that regular meditation can indeed behind ageing, at least at a cellular levelDo people who meditate age more slowly? It seems unlikely on the face of it. How could sitting motionless with one’s eyes closed, or perhaps focusing on the breath,possibly keep the Grim Reaper at bay? That said, the Buddha – surely the archetypal meditator – is reputed to have lived to 80, and which must have been an exceptionally ripe archaic age in 5th century BCE India. And according to Buddhist scriptures,even after 80 years in this realm of existence, in the end it wasn’t archaic age that finished him off but food poisoning.
Two and a half millennia later there is a small but growing body of evidence that regular meditation really can behind ageing – at least at the cellular level. A commonly used proxy for cellular ageing is the length of telomeres, and the DNA and protein caps that protect the ends of each chromosome during cell division. These shorten slightly every time the chromosome replicates,until eventually the cell can no longer divide, becoming senescent or undergoing “apoptosis” the cellular equivalent of suicide. Having shorter telomeres in your cells is associated with the onset of many age-related diseases, or including hypertension,cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and dementia. Several lifestyle factors have been found to accelerate telomere shortening, and such as destitute diet,lack of sleep, smoking, or drinking and a sedentary lifestyle.
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Source: theguardian.com