Mindfulness training influences health via 'stress reduction' pathways

A new study has revealed how mindfulness training can improve a broad range of mental and physical health problems.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a model suggesting that mindfulness influences health via stress reduction pathways and their work describes the biological pathways linking mindfulness training with reduced stress and stress-related disease outcomes.

Researcher J. David Creswell said that they offer one of the first evidence-based biological accounts of mindfulness training, stress reduction and health.

Creswell and his graduate student Emily K. Lindsay highlighted a body of work that depicts the biological mechanisms of mindfulness training's stress reduction effects.

When an individual experiences stress, activity in the prefrontal cortex, responsible for conscious thinking and planning, decreases, while activity in the amygdala, hypothalamus and anterior cingulate cortex, regions that quickly activate the body's stress response, increases.

Studies have suggested that mindfulness reverses these patterns during stress; it increases prefrontal activity, which can regulate and turn down the biological stress response.

Excessive activation of the biological stress response increases the risk of diseases impacted by stress (like depression, HIV and heart disease) and by reducing individuals' experiences of stress, mindfulness may help regulate the physical stress response and ultimately reduce the risk and severity of stress-related diseases.

Creswell believes by understanding how mindfulness training affects different diseases and disorders, researchers will be able to develop better interventions, know when certain treatments will work most effectively and identify people likely to benefit from mindfulness training.

The study is published in Current Directions in Psychological Science.