Neurobiology of Stress

This study evaluated the efficacy of the relaxation response on the postoperative recovery of 27 cardiac surgery patients randomly assigned to one of two groups. Thirteen experimental group patients received educational information and practiced eliciting the relaxation response before and after surgery. The 14 patients in the control group received only information. Experimental and control groups were compared before and after surgery on both physiological and psychological recovery […]

The relaxation response (RR) is the counterpart of the stress response. Millennia-old practices evoking the RR include meditation, yoga and repetitive prayer. Although RR elicitation is an effective therapeutic intervention that counteracts the adverse clinical effects of stress in disorders including hypertension, anxiety, insomnia and aging, the underlying molecular mechanisms that explain these clinical benefits remain undetermined. To assess rapid time-dependent (temporal) genomic […]

Ten of thirteen original participants with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) participated in a one year follow-up study to determine whether the effects of Relaxation Response Meditation (RRM) on IBS symptom reduction were maintained over the long-term. From pre-treatment to one-year follow-up, significant reductions were noted for the symptoms of abdominal pain (p=0.017), diarrhea (p=0.045), flatulence (p=0.030), and bloating (p=0.018). When we examined changes from the original three m […]