If you had the chance to change your brain, would you? If you said yes, meditation might be the answer. Meditation involves sustained thinking aimed to relax or achieve religious or spiritual purposes. It’s a simple and ancient practice; paintings found in the Indus Valley from 5,000-3,500 BCE depict people reposing in meditative postures. Throughout its long history, meditation has been lauded for virtues like improved moods and decreased anxiety. But how does meditation produce these benefits aside from just making people more relaxed?

How can you change your brain?

It turns out that meditation actually changes your brain. This might sound a little strange at first, but many things you do can change your brain thanks to a concept called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to change through experiences or repeated practice. When exposed to a stimuli, the brain can actually create new neurons and form new neural connections that change its structure. When you learn to play new instruments or memorize complicated dance moves, you’re restructuring your brain’s neural pathways.

Think of it this way: when you lift weights repeatedly, your muscles probably get bigger or more toned. They change. Meditation exercises the brain, and like lifting weights, it can produce desired changes.

Funding for research on alternative medicine and meditation surged in the past several years. With healthier budgets and burgeoning new technologies, researchers discovered new scientific connections between meditation and changes in the brain. Below are some summaries of their findings.

Meditation Changes Gray Matter

Massachusetts General Hospital documented that meditation causes changes in the brain’s gray matter. Researchers there measured differences in gray matter concentration in subjects’ brains before and after an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Program using magnetic resonance (MR) images. After meditation, subjects displayed more concentration in the gray matter of different brain regions, including the left hippocampus. They also took before and after images of a control group that practiced no meditation and saw zero notable changes.

Time out. I have gray stuff in my brain?

Yup. Gray matter tissue surrounds the cerebrum. It’s also called the cerebral cortex, but was dubbed gray matter because of its dull tone. This is the part of your brain that wrinkles. The cerebral cortex is responsible for many functions including motor movements, sensory processing, language, and cognitive skills.

After meditation, gray matter in the subjects’ brains became more concentrated in these regions:

• The left hippocampus: The hippocampus is a vital component of the brain’s limbic system, the portion of the brain that handles emotions and memories. It also connects emotions and memories so you can form associations and experience a wave of happiness when recalling your favorite childhood memories. Meditation induced changes in only the left side of the hippocampus. Unfortunately, the function of the different sides eludes explanation. One study found that synapses in the left and right regions are asymmetrical with distinct structural differences, suggesting that they have separate but interrelated functions.
• The posterior cingulate cortex: Many agree that the posterior cingulate cortex plays a role in cognition, specifically attention direction and rewards systems. Brains at rest, brains planning for the future, and brains reflecting on the past show increased activity in this region. A Duke University study suggests this region might be what keeps you motivated when learning something challenging. Posterior cingulate cortex activity in monkeys increased when they made errors in a test and needed to learn something new to improve their performance.
• The temporo-parietal junction: The temporo-parietal junction is often associated with empathy. Studies have found activity in this region increases when subjects read stories about people who were accidentally or intentionally harmed.
• The cerebellum: A large brain region called the cerebellum helps you make coordinated movements and communicates with several other structures in the brain. It’s how you can run, walk, eat, and throw a  football without thinking of all of the tiny movements you need to perform to accomplish these seemingly simple tasks.
• The amygdala: The researchers also found decreased gray matter density in the amygdala, a region associated with anxiety and stress.

Meditation Reduces Anxiety

The Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center found that meditation reduces subjects’ anxiety ratings by as much as 39 percent. They studied 15 volunteers with normal stress levels, no diagnosed issues, and no meditation experience. The volunteers learned the proper way to practice mindful meditation and took just four 20-minute classes. Scientists noted changes in the brain areas associated with worrying and emotions during and after the meditation.

Scientists noticed increased activity in the areas noted below. While each perform many complex functions, their associations with emotions, guilt, and conflict control contributed to the subjects’ decreased anxiety ratings.

• The ventromedial prefrontal cortex: The ventromedial prefrontal cortex has been connected with decisionmaking and cognitive control as well as complex social interactions like emotional processing and guilt. Most people would be incensed after witnessing a poisoning attempt. Studies have shown that people with damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortexes don’t find a moral problem as long as the potential poisoner failed to kill the victim. They view the transaction only as deep as the outcome.
• The anterior cingulate: The anterior cingulate activates during conflict. Recent research has found that it’s also active when we find something humorous. Researchers believe this points to its role in coping with situations. Your brain might not see the difference between trying to understand the punchline of a joke and trying to detect why your spouse could be mad at you.

Meditators Have Different Brains

Other studies from Massachusetts General Hospital reported that meditators’ brains differ structurally from non-meditators’ brains. Meditators have thicker regions for sensory processing and attention than non-meditators. Older people showed even more pronounced differences, suggesting that meditation might be able to reduce thinning of certain structures as the brain ages.

The study showed that you can change the structure of your brain, making certain areas thicker and stronger with constant practice. Why is that so special? Well, Albert Einstein might have owed some of his genius to thicker connective structures in his brain.

These regions indicated below were thicker in the meditators studied:

• The prefrontal cortex: The prefrontal cortex engages when you’re involved in complex and abstract thought, emotions, planning, and introspection. It’s basically your decision center, taking information provided by your senses and deciding what to do with it. It might also play a role in creativity. Scientists studied brain images of jazz artists to see what the brain does during the spontaneous performance of music. During improvisation, the scans revealed a flurry of activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. To make things more interesting, they noticed activity in the dorsol lateral prefrontal cortex decreased; this area of the brain manages inhibitions and detailed planning.
• The insula: The insula is a mysterious prune-sized brain tissue thought to be important in integrating thoughts, senses, and emotions. For example, when you smell something you find repulsive, it’s probably the insula that relays the distaste to your brain in reaction to the odor. It also lights up during arousal–when people feel pain, crave drugs, listen to jokes, and even make financial decisions.

What else can meditation do?

Other studies have suggested fascinating effects of meditation without pinning down the actual brain structures responsible. According to these compelling findings, meditation might…

Allow You to Expand Limited Brain Resources

Our brains have limited capacity for processing synchronous stimuli. For example, when presented with two visual targets in close proximity, you can’t detect the second. This is called attentional blink. See for yourself:

But some studies suggest meditation reduces attentional blink. Attentional blink happens because the two targets compete for your limited brain resources. Meditators allocate their resources across the targets more effectively and therefore can detect both.

Make Us Masters of Pain

Meditation might influence reaction to pain. Researchers pitted 12 thirty-year meditation veterans against 12 normal, yet meditation-less control subjects. The meditation veterans showed a 40-50 percent lower response in their brains when exposed to pain than those in the control group. After the 12 members of the control group practiced meditation for five months, their brains’ responses to pain decreased by 40-50 percent, as well.

Mind Over Matter

Mind over matter. Believe and achieve. Mantras like this stare us down from classroom posters and self help tomes. While the statements are inspiring, few people take them literally. But evidence that you can change your brain through meditation gives these words new life. From changing your gray matter concentration to thickening certain regions of your brain, the emerging studies on meditation are compelling–even for the most skeptical of potential practitioners.

You have the power to change your brain. How’s that for an empowering meditation mantra?

Resources

Primary

Mind, Mood & Memory: Meditation–the Relaxation Remedy: Research Suggests Meditation Can Help Ease Stress, Improve Health and Well-Being, and Even Boost Brain Activity

Townsend Letter: Transcendental Meditation Reduces the Brain’s Reaction to Pain

New Scientist: How Life Shapes the Brainscape: From Meditation to Diet, Life Experiences Profoundly Change the Structure and Connectivity of the Brain

Mind, Mood & Memory: The Neuroscience of Meditation: Spending Time Consciously Directing Awareness to Present-Moment Experience Can Change the Brain’s Activities and Structure

Mind, Mood & Memory: Eight Ways to Improve Your Focus–and Your Memory; These Suggestions For Boosting Concentration Can Help You Strengthen Your Ability to Absorb Information

NIH: Buddha’s Brain: Neuroplasticity and Meditation

PLos Biology: Mental Training Affects Distribution of Limited Brain Resources

NIH: Mindfulness Practice Leads to Increases in Regional Brain Gray Matter Density

Journal of Neuroscience: The Role of the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Abstract State-Based Inference During Decision Making in Humans

Additional

Psych Central: Meditation That Eases Anxiety? Brain Scans Show Us How

Harvard: Eight Weeks to a Better Brain

Reference and User Services Quarterly: Meditation and Health: an Annotated Bibliography

Brain Facts: Mapping the Brain

Brain Facts: The Cerebellum

Education Portal: Hippocampus: Definition, Function & Location

Science Daily: How is Our Left Brain Different From Our Right?

Medical Daily: Motivation Stems From Single Brain Region: The Posterior Cingulate Cortex Keeps You Going When Learning is Tough

Brain Facts: The Moral Brain

Brain Facts: Neuroeconomics: Money and the Brain

Brain Facts: No Laughing (Gray) Matter: Laughter, the Brain, and Evolution

Brain Facts: Unlocking Creativity in the Brain

Psychology Today: An Overview of Meditation: Its Origins and Traditions

Ashley Bell

Ashley Bell communicates about health and wellness every day as a non-profit Program Manager. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Business and Economics from the College of William and Mary, and loves to investigate what changes in healthy policy and research might mean for the future. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Can Meditation Change Your Brain? appeared first on Law Street.

This question might conjure chilling images of flavorless fixed rations, compulsory exercise regimes, and the foreboding scales of a totalitarian weight monitoring mechanism.

Take a deep breath. Mandatory weigh-ins have no place in your near future. However, the government already influences your weight in indirect ways using methods more subtle than scales. It’s not because they’re nosy or superficial, it’s because weight, specifically being overweight, is a burgeoning public health plight in the United States.

What’s the big problem with obesity?

In the not-too-distant past, being overweight was a harmless stigma — a matter of aesthetics and not health. Today we know that obesity comes along with a load of serious health complications like heart disease, high blood pressure, Type 2 Diabetes, and some types of cancer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that 112,000 deaths a year are associated with obesity. Related medical expenses burden the United States with more than $100 billion annually. Ouch.

What’s even scarier? Obesity prevalence is overwhelming the United States population. According to the CDC, more than one third of American adults are obese. That’s more than double the rate of the last decade.

Before you brush it off as an unfortunate fact of life, here’s some visual perspective from the CDC on this explosive growth:

Obesity prevalence in 1990. The darkest blue represents a rate of 10%-14% population obesity.

Obesity prevalence in 2009. Note all of the completely new colors. Obesity rates of all states have surpassed those seen in 1990.

Previous efforts to confront obesity have focused on individual interventions like nutrition education. The climbing rate of obesity despite these efforts revealed some missing pieces in the strategy. Experts realized obesity wasn’t just a matter of willpower. Recognizing the multi-faceted approach needed to combat obesity, officials fixed their attention on underlying causes that escape an individual’s control.

How is obesity out of individual control?

Obesity isn’t just about individual choices, it’s about individual options. The fight against obesity is futile for those without the right options. For example, poor access to supermarkets because of zoning complications may make smart food choices a hopeless pursuit. A simple jog isn’t an option for those with nowhere to do it safely.

Furthermore, we have a hard time helping ourselves. One study found that concern over weight isn’t a sufficient catalyst for behavioral change. Concerned people who lack access to healthy foods are stripped of the power for change. The pervasiveness of fast food establishments peddling calorie-dense foods present an invincible double threat.

Government regulations can interfere when individual resolve falls short. Large-scale policies to create healthier communities could help those who can’t help themselves.

What can the government do?

The Standard Toolkit

The Commerce Clause of the Constitution bestows the federal government with the right to regulate state commerce. This translates practically to weight-related regulations like food labeling mandates and subsidies on foods. On a more local level, the Constitution grants states the power to regulate the health, safety, and welfare of their populations. This broad power translates to a variety of possible actions.

Here are some examples of perfectly legal government actions that affect what we eat and consequently what we weigh:

Taxes and Subsidies

Some cities and states already have taxes on sugary drinks. Opinions are split on extending taxes on junk food. James Carville thinks it might be a good idea to tax “Twinkies more than apples.”

The government subsidizes certain crops, often increasing their prevalence in our diets. Corn is a popular example of the power of subsidies. In Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one researcher likens Americans to corn chips with legs.

Bans: New York City made history when it took measures to strike trans-fats from restaurant menus.  After the rule survived backlash, other states and cities followed suit. In the next few years, the FDA will undertake a national trans-fat phase out.

Labeling: New York City again led the way by requiring restaurants to disclose nutrition information on their menus. The federally-mandated nutrition label is probably the best known example of enforced food labeling.

Zoning and Land Planning: In some areas, large supermarkets and farmers markets are zoned out, making healthy food hard to come by. Developing parks and sidewalks is a proven way to get people moving without the conscious choice to exercise more.

Transportation: Some studies have shown that people who use public transportation weigh less than those who commute in cars. Unfortunately, more money is invested in highways than in public transportation.

Health Care and Benefits: Tennessee and West Virginia have reimbursement programs for Weight Watchers and 42 states provide gastric bypass surgery for the morbidly obese.

Alternative Approaches

Not all approaches that aim to reduce obesity target diet and exercise. Some of them appear unrelated to obesity at first glance. For example, a breastfeeding facility law requires employers to provide proper accommodations to encourage breastfeeding. While the law helps new mothers in many ways, it’s also a CDC priority strategy to prevent obesity as breastfeeding has been tied to reduced early childhood obesity.

Numerous policies and campaigns aspire to shrink obesity rates. They focus on a broad range of factors from diet specifically to overall health and wellness. CDC’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity database lists state-by-state activities if you want to get an idea of what’s in place.

What are lawmakers suggesting?

What does the future hold for the fight against obesity? Check out these examples of what policymakers have been cooking up:

Healthy Lifestyles and Prevention America (HELP) Act: Proposes a multi-pronged intervention strategy to enhance overall wellness of the American people. Children would enjoy enhanced nutrition and physical activity programs in schools and in childcare settings. Adults would benefit from workplace wellness programs. Everyone would benefit from proposed attacks on both salt and tobacco.

FIT Kids Act: Would fund grants for physical education programs that are based on scientific research. States would be required to analyze and identify specific student needs and develop their programs accordingly. The act would also require states to develop indicators of progress.

Reduce Obesity Act of 2013:  Suggests an amendment to title XVIII of the Social Security Act that would require the Medicare and You handbook to include information on behavioral therapy for obesity. It would allow physicians and other experts on Diabetes prevention to provide behavioral therapy outside of the primary care setting.

Stop Childhood Obesity Act of 2014: Seeks to deny financial benefits for companies to advertise and market certain food products to children. Tax deductions granted under the Internal Revenue Code would be barred for advertising to children that promotes consuming foods of poor nutritional quality. The Secretary of the Treasury and the Institute of Medicine would determine what constitutes foods of poor nutritional quality.

Beyond regulations and policies…

Some suggest that legal approaches may fill in the gaps left after regulations. The paper Innovative Legal Approaches to Address Obesity presents techniques that leverage law to  tackle obesity:

Regulating conduct: The Massachusetts decision to ban self-service displays of tobacco was upheld in the case of Lorillard Tobacco v. Reilly. Perhaps courts would uphold similar decisions to remove processed foods from checkout aisles.

Ingredient caps: The government can limit the alcohol content of beer. They might do something similar with sugar if it’s proven to be harmful and addictive.

Limits on food marketing: Advertising messages are protected under First Amendment rights. As early as 1978, the FTC attempted a rule to limit advertising of sugary products to children. The rule was struck down after massive industry opposition. Many hope to revisit similar rules as obesity-related health consequences surface.

Compelling industry speech: A near opposite to limiting advertising would be to compel industry speech and require companies to disclose information that might affect consumption. The United Kingdom’s traffic light system provides an extreme example.

Increasing government speech: Government speech could be leveraged to counteract the prevalence of advertising messages by encouraging the consumption of healthy foods. The “5 a Day” fruit and vegetable campaign in the United States is one such example.

Purchase limits: The Supreme Court has allowed individual purchase limits on items like prescription drugs. Perhaps a limit on the amount of sugary beverages a minor can purchase could also be enacted.

Penalties for causing addiction: The government has a right to restrict sales of certain products to minors that it finds harmful or addictive — like alcohol and cigarettes. Some studies have suggested certain food additives are addictive. Companies could be vulnerable to litigation if they have been knowingly manipulating ingredients to encourage overconsumption.

Nuisance law: Pollution is considered a public nuisance. Likewise, the creation of obesogenic foods proven to be harmful to health could be deemed a public nuisance, punishable by fines or criminal sentences.

Performance-based regulation: Performance-based regulations would put responsibility in the hands of industry. A company might be given a measurable goal related to reducing obesity rates. Businesses that fail to meet assigned outcome goals would be financially penalized.

Where do we go from here?

Let’s be honest, the obesity issue has been confounding us for years. Explosions of diet fads that vilify certain ingredients don’t help matters. Fat? Sugar? Gluten? Carbs? Most people just don’t know what to eat even though they’re being showered with ample advice.

Obesity lacks a simple cause, making it a convoluted case to crack. An array of dimensions in behavior, lifestyle, and environment contribute to it. Policy makers have their work cut out for them in innovating a range of initiatives that might control it. Consumers have their work cut out for them in sorting through all of the advice thrust at them to make sound decisions. Neither can stand alone. Consumers need all the help they can get from carefully designed government regulations that don’t infringe on privacy.

Should the government do more to help the population control their weight? Should they do less? Comment to tell us what you think.

Resources

Primary

CDC: State Legislative and Regulatory Action to Prevent Obesity and Improve Nutrition and Physical Activity

Yale University: Innovative Legal Approaches to Address Obesity

Additional

Millbank Quarterly: Public Health Law and the Prevention and Control of Obesity

Yale University: Improving Laws and Legal Authorities for Obesity Prevention and Control

CDC: Adult Obesity Facts

CDC: Overweight and Obesity Policy Resources

George Washington University: Review of Obesity Related Legislation & Federal Programs

Washington Post: U.S. Sugar Subsidies Need to be Rolled Back

The New York Times: Proposed Tax on Sugary Beverages Debated

Coalition for Sugar Reform: Reform Legislation

Intelligence Squared: Obesity is the Government’s Business

NIH: Evidence for Sugar Addiction: Behavioral and Neurochemical Effects of Intermittent, Excessive Sugar Intake

SAGE: The Role of Self-Efficacy in Achieving Health Behavior Change

Georgetown University Law Center: Assessing Laws and Legal Authorities for Obesity Prevention and Control

Ashley Bell

Ashley Bell communicates about health and wellness every day as a non-profit Program Manager. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Business and Economics from the College of William and Mary, and loves to investigate what changes in healthy policy and research might mean for the future. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post How the Government Regulates Obesity appeared first on Law Street.

I joke a lot about the struggles of law school and bar prep.  I’ve done it here, and here, too.  I’ll likely do it in the future as well.  I’m beginning to realize that constantly discussing a problem is an exercise in futility if there is no talk of a solution, though.  With that in mind, let’s talk about my solution for getting through three years of law school.  It’s called working out, and more specifically for me, yoga.

The Beginning

I first discovered yoga about four months before I entered law school, when an ex of mine suggested I try a class.  I resisted for various reasons, the main two excuses being “yoga isn’t a guy sport” and “I want a real workout when I go to the gym.” Finally, after avoiding taking a class for months, I checked it out one day.  That was in April 2010, and I started attending classes semi-regularly after that.

When done correctly, yoga is a great workout and an amazing way to minimize stress in one’s life.  It’s calming and meditative, but it’s also very physically demanding and pushes your mental limits.

I was a casual yoga attendee before law school; I would go to a class a week at my gym, and only if there was nothing else more exciting occurring.  I always noted how much better I felt after a class, but I chalked that up to endorphins that accompany physical activity.

The Law School-Induced Breakthrough

During the all-important second year of law school, I was more stressed out than my first year.  (Side note: contrary to popular belief, law school gets more insane with each passing year.  If it doesn’t, you’re doing something incorrectly.)  Just going to the gym or running for thirty minutes was not having the same mental effect that it once did.  Because I was so busy, I figured the safest bet was to cut something from my schedule, and working out got the boot.  For the majority of that semester, I rarely worked out, which gave me more time to focus on school, internships, OCI, and the million other things with which second year law school students juggle.

Right around finals time, I was getting dressed to go to the library, and my jeans didn’t fit.  I was livid, and I let all of my law school friends know (in typically dramatic fashion, with a few expletives thrown in) that my legal education was not worth getting fat.

I immediately joined a yoga studio that was equidistant between my house and my school. This way I’d have no choice but to work out. The plan was to re-try yoga as a way to ease back into a fitness plan.

The Obsession

That was in November 2011, and the rest is history.

Anybody who knows me now will tell you that I’m obsessed with yoga and working out.  Something about mental and physical exertion while pushing your body to limits that you never before thought possible really calms me down.  In fact, I don’t think I’d have maintained my sanity throughout the remainder of law school without all of those down dogs and warrior positions.

Casually editing my article.

The Evolution of My Obsession into Full-Blown Addiction

This is especially true during bar prep, which I disrespectfully refer to as Guantanamo.  Guantanamo was so terrible that I went to the gym five or six times a week, just because the mood-enhancing endorphins served as a counter-balance to the joy-stealing lectures about secured transactions, trust law, and the thousand other subjects that New York insists on testing.

Even now, in my post-bar exam/pre-results purgatory, I go to the gym to counteract the stress and anxiety that accompanies the five or six “so did you pass the bar yet?” inquiries I receive a day.  In the beginning, I’d say “If I pass you’ll know, and if I don’t we’ll never talk about it again.”  Now I just say “Namaste,” which luckily is just as off-putting to some people.  Either way, I get asked less about the bar now.

All of this is to say, to everyone who is in law school and learning all of the awesome and not-so-awesome minutiae of the legal world, be sure to give yourself a physical outlet.  It may not be yoga, but definitely do something. It’s not good to be stressed out all the time, mainly because stress causes you to frown, which leaves wrinkles, which makes you look old. I suggest kickboxing—believe me, sometimes the law will make you want to punch things.

—

Peter Davidson is a recent graduate of law school who rants about news & politics and raves over the ups & downs of FUNemployment in the current legal economy.

Images courtesy of [Peter Davidson]

Peter Davidson II

Peter Davidson is a recent law school graduate who rants about news & politics and raves over the ups & downs of FUNemployment in the current legal economy. Contact Peter at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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