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The Covid-19 Pandemic has forced people to realize the importance of a strong immune system and mental resilience. This article looks at the latter and the role that mental wellness has in offsetting stress, and thus mitigating the problems associated with prolonged stress.
Prolonged stress is a trigger for persistent inflammation in the body, which can cause problems such as heart disease and diabetes. Under prolonged stress, these inflammatory proteins can seep into the brain, weakening the hippocampus. The latter is also weakened by hormones in the brain (e.g., cortisol and CRF) which evidence suggests also increase with stress. One consequence is that the amygdala can become dominant, “permanently switched on”, hyperactive. The result is impaired emotional and behavioural control (weak self-regulation skills), reduced attentiveness, all impacting learning, and memory capabilities.
Stress destabilizes the natural balance between rational thinking and emotions.
Battling prolonged stress
The following are probably the basics:
- Exercise has an anti-inflammatory benefit, helping to combat inflammation in the body. There is also evidence that exercise helps produce new brain cells, including in the hippocampus.
- Social interaction. Oxytocin, the “love hormone”, produced from trusting relationships can offset the effects of cortisol, the “stress hormone”.
- Ongoing learning appears to establish a cognitive reserve, which acts as a buffer to negative life events.
- Meditation: A 2014 study concluded that the evidence was moderately strong (on a scale of high, moderate, low, insufficient) that there is small but consistent benefit for mindfulness meditation programs to improve anxiety, depression, and pain.
A key question relates to the relative effectiveness of each of the above approaches. A recent study concluded with respect to reducing stress that: In these RCTs, mindfulness is neither better nor worse than other feel-good practices such as physical exercise. Meditation tends to be relatively simple to practise, cost effective to implement and low risk.
Given the variety of causes and signs of stress, and its subjective measurement, it is not surprising that a breadth of techniques and products have developed to aid mental resiliency. The Defining the Mental Wellness Economy report of November 2020 from the Global Wellness Institute was the first research to measure mental wellness as a global industry, estimated at US$121bn. Given the scale of the issues involved, it is surprising that the Mental Wellness Economy is currently estimated at just 3% of the Global Wellness Economy. This could be interpretated as a major market opportunity.
Here at Conceptasia, we have knowledge and networks in the developing meditation market.
