There is now hard evidence that meditation can cut stress, newspapers reported October 10 2007. The Daily Mail said that “five short sessions of meditation could be enough to help us achieve piece of mind”.
The Daily Telegraph reported that “after meditation training of 20 minutes once a day for only five days, people, had measurably less anxiety and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol”. The papers said that levels of anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue had also gone down.
The stories are based on a study comparing meditative practice (using integrative body-mind training) with relaxation training, in 80 Chinese students. The newspapers have reported accurately the positive outcomes of the research.
The study is a small but well-conducted trial. Whether the findings can be generalised to the practice of individual meditation (as opposed to guided, group practice as is used here) and across cultures remains to be seen.
Being overweight may not be as unhealthy as it was 40 years ago," BBC News reports. New research has found a body mass index (BMI) of 27 is linked to the lowest rate of death – but someone with a BMI of 27 is currently classed as being overweight. BMI is a score calculated by dividing your weight (usually in kilograms) by the square of your height (usually in metres and centimetres). Currently, a BMI of 25 to 29.9 is classified as being overweight. Researchers looked at 120,528 people from Copenhagen, recruited from 1976 to 2013, and separately compared those recruited during the 1970s, 1990s and 2000s. They were followed up until they died, emigrated, or the study finished. The BMI linked to the lowest risk of having died from any cause was 23.7 in the 1970s group, 24.6 in the 1990s group, and had further risen to 27 in the 2003-13 group. It may be the case that the suggested upward shift in optimal BMI is the result of improvements in preventative treatments for weight-rela...