Going On Vacation Can Actually Change Your Gene Activity

(Reuters Health) - In a new study comparing a meditation retreat with just relaxing in the same locale, both options improved stress regulation, immune function and other cellular markers in the blood. Researchers measured gene activity, blood markers and reported wellbeing during the vacation and months afterward, and found a large and immediate “vacation effect” in all participants. For those who continued meditating, benefits were seen even 10 months later. “Vacation in a relaxing, resort-like environment takes you away from your day-to-day grind, which may be high stress in which your body is in a more defensive-like posture, with pressures to meet deadlines, dealing with angry customers, ‘battling’ with colleagues for resources to accomplish your mission or whatever,” said senior author Dr. Eric Schadt, founding director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mount Sinai in New York. “On a relaxing vacation you allow your body to get out of that defensive posture, reduce your levels of stress which in turn affects the states of cells that are involved in your immune system,” he said. At the molecular level, additional changes only happened, or happened more, in the meditation group, including more effective manufacture and use of proteins, he noted. “We don’t know what this means exactly, but given associations with biomarkers of aging, there is the potential that these changes could enhan...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news