Mindfulness in Eating and Living

Mindfulness Through Yoga – Katherine doing a side plank

“There are many health benefits to being more mindful,” says Jack Killen, MD, Deputy Director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Meditation – and similarly centering prayer – for the religious among you, establishes pathways in the brain which improve impulse control, helping you work through problems and decisions more effectively. This simple, yet powerful, tool can transform your health and your life as it helps you make the decisions you need to make your life more satisfying, for instance, decisions about eating and exercise can be done more thoughtfully and purposefully..

In the Diet Simple chapter, “How to Beat Emotional Eating,” I give you a step-by-step guide to understanding how your feelings influence your eating.

The following are excerpts from a recent interview with Jack Killen explaining how meditation works to help you regulate your emotions, so you can reign them in to make healthier decisions for your long-term benefit:

Katherine: What is mindfulness?

Dr. Killen: Mindfulness is the ability to be present, more focused, and clear; for concentration to be more sustained, and for attention to be on what’s happening, instead of on thoughts, memories, and associations.

Katherine: Why is it important to be mindful? What are some scientifically proven benefits?

Dr. Killen: There is neurobiological research demonstrating that mindfulness engages pathways in the brain associated with emotion and impulse control, attention, and focusing. It allows your brain to be focused on what is here and now so you are better able to respond to situations appropriately. People who are more mindful are better able to handle emotional situations in more appropriate ways, are more able to think through a problem, are less likely to be distracted by issues that won’t help… There is evidence that you improve at mental tests, that emotion regulation is better and more appropriate, blood pressure is lower, stress hormones are lower, thereby reducing stress.

Katherine: How can one become more mindful? I understand prayer or meditation may be helpful?

Dr. Killen: There is a lot of evidence accumulating that meditation in all of its forms has beneficial physiological effects. Meditation is a way of exercising neurological pathways in the brain which help us become more mindful. But it is a bit like going to the gym and working out your muscles. It takes time and practice for the beneficial brain pathways to become established, similar to building muscular strength and flexibility.

Katherine: What are some examples of meditation which may have these kinds of emotional and behavioral benefits?

Dr. Killen: There are many ways you can train your mind to be more mindful. The jury is still out as to whether one is better than another. More likely, certain types of meditation will work well for certain people, and other kinds for other people. We are still working on how to measure and study meditation.

There are several types of meditation. “Mantra” meditation is repeating a phrase, or something with deep meaning over and over, or focusing on a candle, for instance. “Mindfulness” meditation is focusing on what is happening now instead of on thoughts, memories, and associations.

Katherine: Are yoga, tai chi, and other forms of exercise considered good ways to achieve mindfulness?

Dr. Killen: While mind/body interventions are difficult to research, there are some encouraging data. Yoga and meditation are intertwined in many ways. Studies suggest yoga is useful in increasing lung capacity, improving mood, well-being, posture, and there are similar benefits with Tai Chi. But there is a larger body of research on meditation and its benefits.

Katherine: Is there scientific evidence that these mind/body interventions such as meditation or yoga will promote healthier lifestyles?

Dr. Killen: This is what we are studying at the Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Getting definitive answers to those questions through rigorous scientific research could make these kinds of health interventions more widely available. Important work going on right now is defining research methods. We need to understand, for instance, which yoga postures (“asana”) benefit your health and in what specific ways? If we want to make health interventions more widely available and accepted, we need to be able to describe their effects better, thus magnifying their benefits. We are currently studying if these mind-body interventions are a means to help people with metabolic syndrome, if they’d be useful in weight-control programs, helping people eat less, or more healthfully.