健康生活:深度冥想的神奇效用

At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, doctor's orders can include an unlikely prescription: meditation.
波士頓柏斯以色列狄肯尼斯醫學中心(Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center)開出的醫囑中會包含一項令人難以置信的處方：冥想。

'I recommend five minutes, twice a day, and then gradually increase,' said Aditi Nerurkar, a primary-care doctor and assistant medical director of the Cheng & Tsui Center for Integrative Care, which offers alternative medical treatment at the Harvard Medical School-affiliated hospital. 'It's basically the same way I prescribe medicine. I don't start you on a high dose right away.' She recommends that patients eventually work up to about 20 minutes of meditating, twice a day, for conditions including insomnia and irritable bowel syndrome.
鄭與崔中西醫結合護理中心(Cheng & Tsui Center for Integrative Care)的醫療主管助理、初級保健醫師阿底提•內魯卡(Aditi Nerurkar)說，“我建議進行五分鐘的冥想，每天兩次，然後循序漸進、逐漸增量。”內魯卡還說，“這與我開藥的方式基本相同。我不會讓你在一開始就立馬嘗試高劑量的藥物。”她建議患者循序漸進、最終達到約20分鐘時量的冥想，且每天進行兩次。這種療法適用於失眠症和腸道易激綜合症等疾病。鄭與崔中西醫結合護理中心在哈佛醫學院附屬醫院向患者提供替代性醫學治療。

Integrative medicine programs including meditation are increasingly showing up at hospitals and clinics across the country. Recent research has found that meditation can lower blood pressure and help patients with chronic illness cope with pain and depression. In a study published last year, meditation sharply reduced the risk of heart attack or stroke among a group of African-Americans with heart disease.
包括冥想在內的中西醫結合項目在全美各地的醫院、診所變得越來越常見。新近一項研究已發現，冥想能降低血壓、幫助慢性病患者應對疼痛和抑鬱。去年發表的一項研究表明，在一組患有心臟病的非洲裔美國人中，冥想極大地減少了他們的心臟病和中風的發病風險。

At Beth Israel Deaconess, meditation and other mind-body therapies are slowly being worked into the primary-care setting. The program began offering some services over the past six months and hopes eventually to have group meditation classes, said Dr. Nerurkar.
在柏斯以色列狄肯尼斯醫學中心，冥想和其他身心療法正慢慢融入初級保健體系。內魯卡說，該項目在過去的六個月中已開始提供一些服務，他們希望最終能開辦團體冥想班。

Health experts say meditation shouldn't be used to replace traditional medical therapies, but rather to complement them. While it is clear that 'when you breathe in a very slow, conscious way it temporarily lowers your blood pressure,' such techniques shouldn't be used to substitute for medications to manage high blood pressure and other serious conditions, said Josephine Briggs, director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health. In general, she said, meditation can be useful for symptom management, not to cure or treat disease.
健康專家說，冥想不該被用來替代傳統藥物治療，而應當作爲補充療法。隸屬於美國國立衛生研究院(National Institutes of Health)的國家補充替代醫學中心(National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine)負責人約瑟芬•布里格斯(Josephine Briggs)說，“很明顯，當你以一種非常緩慢、刻意的方式呼吸，這麼做能暫時降低你的血壓。”但這樣的方法不該被當作治療高血壓和其他嚴重疾病的藥物替代品。她還稱，一般而言，冥想在併發症和綜合症處理上是有所作用的，但它卻無法治癒或治療疾病。

Dr. Briggs said the agency is funding a number of studies looking at meditation and breathing techniques and their effect on numerous conditions, including hot flashes that occur during menopause. If meditation is found to be beneficial, it could help women avoid using hormone treatments, which can have detrimental side effects, she said.
布里格斯說，國家補充替代醫學中心正在資助一系列針對冥想、呼吸方法及它們對諸多疾病影響的研究，包括女性在更年期出現的熱潮紅現象。如果冥想被發現對這些疾病有療效的話，它有可能幫助女性避免使用激素治療。後者會產生不良的副作用。

Martha O'Boyle, a 51-year-old in Fremont, Calif., has suffered from chronic pain in her arms, chest and elsewhere since suffering from a heart attack two years ago.
來自加州弗裏蒙特(Fremont)，現年51歲的瑪莎•奧博伊(Martha O'Boyle)自兩年前突發一場心臟病後，就一直飽受着遍佈胳膊、胸部及其他部位慢性疼痛的折磨。

'Here's a cardiologist telling me to go and meditate,' said Ms. O'Boyle. 'I'm thinking, does she think I'm crazy?'
奧博伊說，“這兒有位心臟病專家建議我去進行冥想。當時我就想，她是以爲我瘋了嗎？”

Ms. O'Boyle began taking meditation classes at Stanford Hospital & Clinics in 2011. The eight-week class consisted of once-a-week sessions lasting two to three hours. 'Once I started the class I saw the benefits of it,' she said. Now, Ms. O'Boyle meditates every day for 20 to 45 minutes. 'The pain is not gone, but it helps me cope with it,' she said.
2011年，奧博伊開始參加斯坦福醫院診所(Stanford Hospital & Clinics)開辦的冥想課。該課程爲期八週，每週上課一次，每次持續兩到三個小時。奧博伊說，“我一上課，就感受到它的好處了。”奧博伊現在每天都會冥想20到45分鐘。她說，“疼痛雖然沒有消失，但冥想卻能幫我應對它。”

The most common type of meditation recommended by doctors and used in hospital programs is called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, which was devised at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Nerurkar said she doesn't send patients to a class for training. Instead, she and other physicians at Beth Israel Deaconess will demonstrate the technique in the office. 'Really it's just sitting in a quiet posture that's comfortable, closing your eyes and watching your breath,' she said.
醫生最常推薦的，且最常用於醫院項目中的一種冥想類型叫做“正念減壓”。它是由麻省大學醫學院(University of Massachusetts Medical School)研發出來的。內魯卡說，她並未將患者送到那裏參加課程訓練。相反，內魯卡和柏斯以色列狄肯尼斯醫學中心的其他內科醫生將在辦公室演示這種冥想方法。內魯卡說，“實際上就是以一種你覺得舒服的姿勢安靜地坐着，閉上你的眼睛、並注意你的呼吸。”Murali Doraiswamy, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., says it isn't clearly understood how meditation works on the body. Some forms of meditation have been found to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which stimulates the body's relaxation response, improves blood supply, slows down heart rate and breathing and increases digestive activity, he said. It also slows down the release of stress hormones, such as cortisol.
北卡羅萊納州達勒姆的杜克大學醫學中心(Duke University Medical Center)精神病學教授穆拉利•多雷斯瓦米(Murali Doraiswamy)說，目前還不清楚冥想是如何作用於身體的。有些形式的冥想已被發現能激活副交感神經系統，而這又會刺激身體的放鬆反應，改善血液供給、降低心率、放緩呼吸並促進消化活動。多雷斯瓦米還稱，冥想也能減緩皮質醇等壓力激素的分泌。

Dr. Doraiswamy says he recommends meditation for people with depression, panic or anxiety disorders, ongoing stress, or for general health maintenance of brain alertness and cardiovascular health.
多雷斯瓦米說，他向那些患有抑鬱症、恐慌症、焦慮症、長期飽受壓力折磨的人，以及那些注重大腦養生與心血管健康的人都推薦冥想療法。

Thousands of studies have been published that look at meditation, Dr. Doraiswamy said. Of these, about 500 have been clinical trials testing meditation for various ailments, but only about 40 trials have been long-term studies. It isn't known whether there is an optimal amount of time for meditating that is most effective. And, it hasn't been conclusively shown that the practice causes people to live longer or prevents them from getting certain chronic diseases.
多雷斯瓦米說，成千上萬種針對冥想的研究成果都已發表。這其中，約有500項研究針對各種疾病進行了冥想療法的臨牀試驗，但僅僅只有約40例試驗經過了長期的研究。目前還不清楚多長時間的冥想活動效果最佳。而對於此類活動能否延長人們的壽命或使人們遠離某些慢性病，至今仍尚無定論。

Some short-term studies have found meditation can improve cognitive abilities such as attention and memory, said Dr. Doraiswamy. Using imaging, scientists have shown that meditation can improve the functional performance of specific circuits in the brain and may reduce age-related shrinkage of several brain centers, particularly those that may be vulnerable in disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.
多雷斯瓦米還稱，有些短期研究已發現，冥想能提高如注意力和記憶力這樣的認知能力。科學家利用成像技術發現，冥想能改善人們大腦中某些特定迴路的功能特性，還可能減少隨着年齡增長而出現的大腦中樞萎縮狀況，特別是對於那些容易患上老年癡呆症(Alzheimer's disease，又稱阿茲海默症)等病症的人更是如此。

In a study published last year in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, African-Americans with heart disease who practiced Transcendental Meditation regularly were 48% less likely to have a heart attack or stroke, or to die, than those who attended a health-education class. Among the meditation group, there were 20 such occurrences, compared with 32 in the control group. The study, which ran for more than five years, involved about 200 people.
美國心臟協會(American Heart Association)《循環》(Circulation)期刊上去年發表的一項名爲《心血管特性和效果》(Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes)的研究表明，在患有心臟病的非洲裔美國人中，那些經常練習超覺冥想的人突發心臟病或中風、死亡的風險比那些參加健康教育課的人要低48%。在冥想小組中出現了20個這樣的病發案例，而在實驗對照組中，這一數據爲32。該研究持續的時間超過了五年，總共涉及約200人。

Recent research found that meditation can result in molecular changes affecting the length of telomeres, a protective covering at the end of chromosomes that gets shorter as people age. The study involved 40 family caregivers of dementia patients. Half of the participants meditated briefly on a daily basis and the other half listened to relaxing music for 12 minutes a day. The eight-week study found that people who meditated showed a 43% improvement in telomerase activity, an enzyme that regulates telomere length, compared with a 3.7% gain in the group listening to music. The participants meditating also showed improved mental and cognitive functioning and lower levels of depression compared with the control group. The pilot study was published in January in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.
最近的研究發現，冥想能引起影響端粒長度的分子變化。端粒是染色體末端的一種保護覆蓋物，它會隨着人的年事增高而變得越來越短。這項研究涉及40名照料癡呆症患者的家庭醫護人員。有一半的參與者每天都會進行簡短的冥想，而另一半的人則會每天聆聽12分鐘放鬆身心的音樂。這項持續了八週的研究發現，那些冥想者的端粒 ──端粒 是一種修復端粒長度的 ──活性提高了43%，而聽音樂的那組人只提高了3.7%。與實驗對照組相比，參與冥想的人還表現出更強的心理和認知功能、更低的抑鬱程度。這項試驗性研究於一月份發表在《國際老年精神病學雜誌》(International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry)上。

Government-funded research also is exploring meditation's effect on dieting and depression.
由政府資助的研究也正在探索冥想對節食和抑鬱的影響。