Meditation and mindfulness is a practice that has been around for thousands of years, but it has recently seen a surge in popularity in the self-help, improvement, and mental health spaces, and for good reason. Meditation has extensive benefits and is one of the few “brain rewiring” practices that actually has evidence to back it up.

Here are seven benefits to meditation.

Reduced stress

There are an extensive number of studies that have demonstrated and validated the effect that meditation can have on reducing stress. Much of this has to do with the down regulation of the sympathetic nervous system, or the fight or flight response, which tends to drive alertness and hyper vigilance. This system is needed for survival, especially back when we needed to fend ourselves against wolves and tigers.

These days, things like work stresses and life stresses can wind up our fight or flight system. When the fight or flight system is on for prolonged periods of time, this stress can become detrimental and lead to burnout. Meditation and mindful breathing helps to bring this back down and engages the parasympathetic system, or the rest and digest system.

Sit down for 5-10 minutes and gently focus on your breathing to manage your stress. If you feel like you don’t have 5-10 minutes to meditate, trust me. You will be more productive afterwards.

Rewires the dopamine system

Studies have shown that consistent meditation can help to improve dopamine tone. This means that the normal baseline of dopamine increases, which helps with mood, motivation, focus, stress, and overall mental well-being.

An in-depth discussion of the dopamine system and its implications is beyond the scope of this post, but just understand that baseline levels of dopamine can be disrupted and can rise and plummet erratically with hyper-enjoyable activities, which has direct implications to addiction.

When dopamine levels plummet, people can feel unmotivated and depressed. In this day and age of constant stimulation and instant gratification, dopamine levels likely reflect the consistency of a rollercoaster.

Meditation helps to “reset” and bring this baseline level of dopamine back up to normal levels. This brings us to our next point.

Battles addiction

With dopamine so closely related to how pleasurable we perceive activities and how we seek out those activities, it has direct implications to addiction. Dr. Andrew Huberman, who has an amazing podcast episode on dopamine, describes addiction as “the progressive narrowing of the things we find pleasurable”.

A number of studies have shown that meditation and mindfulness practices can help with addiction recovery. Part of this may be due to the changes in brain function, but a lot of it is likely do to the increased self-awareness associated with meditation. Understanding how one is feeling, what certain triggers are, and being mindful of when there are vulnerabilities gives a powerful set of tools to maintain sobriety from addiction.

Sidebar: If you are suffering from addiction, there are resources out there for help. Call 1-800-662-4357, or 1-800-662-HELP for the Substance Abuse And Mental Health Services Administration.

Reduced anxiety

Meditation has been shown to help with anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder. In fact, it has been validated so much that certain insurance companies now offer to pay for part of meditation app subscriptions.

Many psychology and therapy clinicians will build mindfulness and meditation practices into their treatment plan because of its effects. In healthcare practice, when a method or technique is adopted by such large groups and companies that are responsible for getting people better, it’s a good sign that it works well.

Something you should understand about anxiety is that it is much easier to prevent and manage low levels of anxiety than reverse the effects of severe anxiety and panic attacks, so learn to manage it before it gets bad.

Stronger frontal lobe

MRI studies have shown that meditation can make the frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex thicker. These are the areas that are associated with higher order thinking, decision making, and emotional regulation. You can start to appreciate that all of these benefits begin to tie together.

Increased activity of the frontal lobe is also associated with improved impulse control, which has direct implications for behavior related issues such as addiction. I don’t know about you, but I’m all for anything that can make for a stronger brain!

Increased gray matter volume

Meditation is associated with an increase in gray matter volume in a widespread number of areas in the brain. Literally, a brain that’s more jacked!

The increase was in areas of the brain associated with sensory processing as well as the frontal cortex, which we just discussed. These areas are associated with decision making and working memory.

In a nutshell, it’s easier for you to learn and retain information. This is literally what gimmicky brain “supplements” try to sell you, except you can do it for free and without putting god knows what into your body.

Improved concentration

Concentration is essentially our ability to direct our attention towards an object or subject of focus. In this day and age where our attention is being pulled in different directions every moment of the day, it is no wonder that people can’t focus their efforts on anything. It’s gotten so bad that people are constantly being distracted by their own brain’s internal dialogue.

If concentration is a muscle, then meditation and mindfulness is the gym where you train it. When you meditate, you’re literally practicing paying attention to an object of focus. Most often, people will tune into their breathing or scan how their body feels, gently letting their mind relax and trying to keep the mind from wandering.

Remember that numerous studies have shown that there are real changes in the brain that occur when you implement a meditation practice. Improvements in impulse control, emotional regulation, and working memory all work together to improve your ability to focus.

Conclusion

There are many fads and gimmicks out there that promise to take away brain fog, give you superhuman cognition, or improve memory, but they are seldom supported by any evidence. Always be wary of anyone selling you a solution to “rewire” your brain. Meditation is simple and effective way to actually take care of your mental health.

This is true evidence-based brain rewiring. There are many apps that provide guided meditation, and many of these have free trials. I highly recommend just picking one and giving it shot.