Brain – Wellness: Asian Opportunities

Investigating the effect of meditation on stress through both the measurement of hair-based glucocorticoid assays, and from questionnaire data, the October 2021 RCT study ⁽¹⁾ concluded that:

Our results show that daily mental training for 3 to 6 months can buffer the long-term systemic stress load of healthy adults. This was reflected in a reduction of cortisol (HC) and cortisone (HE) accumulation in hair, while levels of self-reported chronic stress were less consistently decreased.

How scientists measure stress is discussed here.

The study also found that the reduction of cortisol (HC) and cortisone (HE) accumulation in hair were independent of specific training content, (table below), positively associated with practice frequency for HC, and reached a ceiling after 6 months of training.

Equally, it took 6 months until significant differences to the baseline were achieved in all training cohorts, suggesting that reliable long-term benefits emerge only after a relatively long period of intense training.

The study used a range of meditation techniques

1) Attention/Interoceptive Awareness

The Core Exercises:

Breathing Meditation

Body Scan

2) Care, Compassion, Gratitude/Prosocial Motivation/Dealing with Difficult emotions

The Core Exercises

Loving-kindness Meditation

Affect Dyad

3) Meta-cognition/Perspective-taking on Self/Perspective-taking on Others

The Core Exercises

Observing-thought Meditation

Perspective Dyad

For much more on meditation and wellness, please see our book, available on Amazon:

Wellness and Meditation, Perspectives from Japan. The scientific underpinnings and practical problems of building mental resiliency.

References:

Contemplative Mental Training Reduces Hair Glucocorticoid Levels in a Randomized Clinical Trial, by Puhlmann, Lara M.C.; Vrticka, Pascal; Linz, Roman; Stalder, Tobias; Kirschbaum, Clemens; Engert, Veronika; Singer, Tania, in Psychosomatic Medicine, October 2021

Stress & Mental Wellness

The full 12-page PDF article is here:

https://wellnessasianopportunities.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Stress-and-Mental-Wellness-January-2021-PEC.pdf

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.