

Meditation associated with preserved telomere length in breast cancer patients - prostoalex
http://www.fastcompany.com/3040039/its-not-just-for-your-brain-meditating-can-actually-change-your-dna

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anentropic
It could also have been the yoga "The first group was randomly assigned to an
8-week cancer recovery program consisting of mindfulness meditation and yoga"

this is a crummy article with a crummy headline about one single study which
may or may not also be crummy

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waps
Maybe it's as simple as this :

Start a new research. Work with 1-sigma significance (~2% error rate allowed).
Then investigate the favorite brand of soup of the brothers of cured cancer
patients. Make sure to research about 50 brands.

Huge news ! If you get your brother to eat soup brand 23 you have a
significantly higher chance to survive cancer ! Huge article in every
newspaper.

What happened here ? 2% error rate.

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geekam
Can people who meditate point to good resources on how and where to start?
Books, videos, blogs etc.

~~~
fnordsensei
Meditation is a lot less complicated than sometimes advertised. It can be
helpful to know that alternative terms for the same activity is
"contemplation" or "deep thought". It's a skill though, and you'll get better
at it over time.

Set a timer for five minutes, sit down in a comfortable position (usually
better than lying down, to keep yourself awake). Count your breaths until 10
and then count backwards down again. Repeat until the timer goes off, and bam!
Meditation accomplished.

Don't worry if your mind drifts off, that's not a sign of failure. Just keep
doing the task at hand (counting).

Use headphones if you need to block out sound. Slow music without lyrics or
plain nature sounds usually work better.

Once you have that down, there are about a billion variations and ways to
continue, but starting out doesn't have to be more complicated than outlined
above.

Usually we wish to measure progress when undertaking any kind of endeavor,
especially new ones, but measuring (or even defining) progress when it comes
to meditation can be hard sometimes. It may require discipline on your part in
order to overcome the perceived lack of feedback, but I assure you that you'll
be very glad that you kept at it once you do start to notice what happens.

~~~
Gnewt
I fully agree that meditation is less complicated than advertised. However I'd
like to state that "contemplation" and "deep thought" are alternative terms
for a specific type of meditation called mindfulness meditation: "the
intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of one's attention on the
emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment."

When I meditate, my goal is not actually to contemplate anything at all -- it
is to clear my mind, whittle my senses down until the only thing I feel is
consciousness. Ultimately, in a state of deep meditation, my goal is a fully
blank state, in which I'm doing nothing except existing.

I find that this helps me tremendously in my mindfulness in normal life, but I
don't attempt to be mindful _during_ meditation in the same way.

~~~
fnordsensei
Absolutely, this was not intended to be about semantics. The alternative
interpretations were given so as to make it easier to dispel the cumbersome
connotations that usually comes with the word "meditation", not to make it
seem like it's about a particular school of thought or anything like that.
It's just to make it easier to sit down and try it out with fewer preconceived
notions as to what it's supposed to be.

I think it's the privilege of the practitioner to formulate what meditation is
to them, and the easier it is to establish a personal relationship to the
practice unhindered by baggage (cultural, institutional, linguistic or
otherwise), the better.

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mrbonner
Exercise can also change your DNA:
[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/how-exercise-
change...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/how-exercise-changes-our-
dna/)

Exposure to radiation can change your DNA.

Heck, everything can change (read mutate) your DNA.

~~~
xxxyy
The title of the article you provided is completely incorrect. There is no
change to DNA detected by these studies. What gets changes is the expression
level of individual genes. Expression level can be changed by almost
everything, as it is exactly the fine art of turning ACTG sequence into living
organisms.

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tokenadult
I see after a Google search that it has been mostly popular press outlets
without experienced medical reporters who have commented on this story so far.
For the most part, what we are seeing online are recycled editions of the
study group's press release. The underlying journal publication "Mindfulness-
based cancer recovery and supportive-expressive therapy maintain telomere
length relative to controls in distressed breast cancer survivors" is open-
access,[1] so medically knowledgeable people here can read the study and check
whether its methodology makes sense.

I note that the lead author of the study, Linda E. Carlson, is part of a group
of cancer researchers promoting "integrative" approaches to cancer treatment.
Another cancer researcher commenting on this approach thinks that
"integrative" cancer therapy so far promises much more than it can actually
deliver in improved patient outcomes.[2] The original headline of the _Fast
Company_ article submitted here, already changed by the Hacker News moderation
team, is surely wrong, and it's not at all clear that this extraordinary claim
will replicate if an independent group of researchers attempt to replicate the
results. If I or any of my loved ones should happen to have a case of cancer
(which is rather rare in my family), I will ask for advice on how to treat it
from a doctor who practices science-based medicine.

[1]
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full)

[2] [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/selling-integrative-
onco...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/selling-integrative-oncology-as-
a-monograph-in-jnci/)

~~~
reader5000
Your argument appears to be that the word "integrative" implies non-science
based medicine/research. Is there any reason to believe the journal Cancer is
in some way lacking in scientific standards? I have no idea. But assuming it
is a well-respected publication the results appearing in it require more
evidence to dismiss other than a paper author does "integrative" research.

~~~
tokenadult
One of my problems with this study (and many preliminary medical intervention
studies hyped mostly by press releases) is that it deals with a biomarker--
telomere length--rather than with a hard endpoint, for example actual improved
cancer survival and reduced all-cause mortality in the patients.

Anyone looking on can read the paper for themselves for issues like sample
size, the reported statistics, whether the expected finding was specified in
advance, and so on. A recent submission to HN[1] cautions that press releases
are not usually good guides to what a study has actually found.

[1] [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/communicating-health-
sci...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/communicating-health-science-
news/)

~~~
cscurmudgeon
> One of my problems with this study (and many preliminary medical
> intervention studies hyped mostly by press releases) is that it deals with a
> biomarker--telomere length--rather than with a hard endpoint, for example
> actual improved cancer survival and reduced all-cause mortality in the
> patients.

That is not an issue with the study's quality. It is more of an issue with the
study's motive (goal?).

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steven2012
Telomeres are not the same as DNA.

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ajarmst
A more accurate headline might be that meditation appears to ameliorate
genetic damage associated with stress. But I guess that's less surprising,
exciting and clickable than implying that meditation causes Lamarckian
inheritance.

~~~
xxxyy
Yes, and it is worth noting that telomeres, while technically being DNA, do
not code any proteins. In fact their complexity is at a completely trivial
level - just a repeated sequence of "TTAGGG". This is also the part of DNA
that does not get sequenced with the rest of one's code. There is a lot of
speculation on what else can extend telomeres [1]. So yes, a clickbait.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere#Lengthening](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere#Lengthening)

