Poster Session IIIWednesday, December 1. Massachusetts General Hospital, Silver Spring, Maryland Background: Telomeres are nucleoprotein structures located at the ends of chromosomes which shorten with repetitive cell division and replication. Generally, telomeres shorten with age, but this shortening may be accelerated in the presence of cellular oxidative damage or chronic psychological stress. Shorter telomeres have been associated with earlier mortality (Cawthon et al., 2. Therefore, telomere length may reflect the association of psychological well- being on health and longevity. A variety of health related factors have been associated with longer telomeres (non- smoking, healthy diet, exercise, being married; (Sun et al., 2. Yen and Lung, 2. 01. In previous research, meditation practice was associated with higher telomerase activity (the enzyme that helps repair telomeres by adding DNA hexameric repeats to restore telomere length) in a group of individuals at the end of an intensive three- month full- time mediation retreat, compared to a control group (Jacobs et al., 2. Loving- Kindness or metta meditation comes from the Vipassana Buddhist tradition, and focuses on developing a positive intention, unselfish kindness and warmth towards all people (Salzberg, 1. Published work on Loving- Kindness Meditation (LKM) has demonstrated positive effects of this practice on the individual (more positive emotions, greater sense of purpose in life, and decreased illness symptoms such as headaches, congestion or weakness (Fredrickson et al., 2. Because of this potential beneficial effect on psychological and physical health, we hypothesized that experienced LKM meditators would have longer telomeres than age, gender, and education- matched controls. Methods: Individuals (> 1. LKM practice were recruited from meditation communities in New England. LKM participants had> 4 years of regular, nearly daily LKM practice and overnight meditation retreat experience. Control participants (> 1. Exclusion criteria for both groups included the current diagnosis of schizophrenia/psychosis, intellectual disability, substance abuse/dependence, major depression, anxiety disorder, serious current medical illness, hormonal medication, inflammatory disease, diagnosis of cancer in the last 5 years, pregnancy or lactation. We recruited 7. 5% of the LKM group first, and then recruited controls that resembled the LKM group, targeting the mean age (+/- 5 years), gender proportions, education level, and levels of depression history observed in the LKM group. Several LKM participants had a history of past major depressive episodes, and many had a graduate degree. Therefore, in order to prevent confounding, we over- enrolled control participants that had a past history of depression and a graduate level of education. Blood was obtained by venipuncture from an anticubital vein and collected into tubes containing Ficoll gel for separation of leukocytes by centrifugation. As described previously, the average relative leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is reported as the exponentiated sample ratio of telomere copy number to a 3. B4 copy number (T/S) corrected for a reference sample (Cawthon, 2. A Shapiro- Wilk test showed that our RTL data were not normally distributed (W=0. V=4. 3. 8, z=3. 1, p=0. A log transformation further failed to produce a normal distribution; therefore, we felt that the most conservative approach was to use non- parametric tests; we thus compared RTL between the two groups with a two- sample Wilcoxon rank- sum (Mann- Whitney) test. Results: The meditation practitioners typically practiced LKM as part of a larger set of Vipassana meditation practices. The average number of lifetime hours of LKM was 5. Free Role-Playing Games. This is a collection of links to over 500 free role-playing games (RPGs) on the WWW. RPG here refers solely to narrative (aka "table-top. Type or paste a DOI name into the text box. Click Go. Your browser will take you to a Web page (URL) associated with that DOI name. Send questions or comments to doi. Express Helpline- Get answer of your question fast from real experts. Overall meditation practice lifetime hours was 4,9. There were no significant differences in age, gender, race, education, or exposure to trauma. The control group did have a higher Body Mass Index (BMI); however, in the overall sample, being overweight (BMI≥2. BMI< 2. 5, n=2. RTL (z=- 1. 2. 26, p=. In addition, the LKM group had a higher rate of past depression. Overall, median relative telomere length (RTL) was longer in meditation practitioners (0. Among women participants, telomere length was significantly longer in meditators (0. There was no significant difference between groups among male participants. Conclusions: We found longer relative telomere lengths in individuals with years of experience in LKM, compared to age, gender, education, and trauma- matched individuals, and significantly longer RTL in women meditators than gender matched controls. Our finding suggests that LKM could have beneficial effects on mortality. These findings are in line with other research showing beneficial health effects of other- focused activities (spousal caregiving, community volunteering) and compassion or kindness towards others (altruism, forgiveness). For example, forgiveness of others has also be associated with greater longevity in a longitudinal study of elderly (Toussaint et al., 2. Similarly, Pace et al found relationships between compassion meditation and lower markers of inflammation (Pace et al., 2. Keywords: telomeres, stress, meditation. Disclosure: Nothing to Disclose.
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November 2017
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