For those who practice it, it’s a way to self regulate internal mental distractions. A scientist’s perceives meditation as a means to enhance brain function and cognition in both normal and impaired people.
The average person has around seventy thousand thoughts per day which, depending on the thought, could provide someone with plenty to stress over. Meditation is like exercise for the brain, it is a form of training. In doing so, a person infuses their thoughts with love, happiness, and wellbeing. Doing this also helps maintain a balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.
There are also different types of stress. There is acute stress, which is more short term, often something recent and anticipated that comes along with its own pressures and demands upon the person. Then there is chronic stress, which as suggests is a lingering and long term type of stress, such as a childhood trauma, poverty, a dysfunctional family, or possibly something environmental. Regardless of which kind it is, stress has a physiology. First it causes tension or possibly panic, then the hormones get in on the act as the body releases cortisol, adrenaline, and epinephrine. The more lasting effects are high blood pressure and the body takes energy away from the immune, reproductive, and digestive systems in order to combat the stress. Enjoy several charts which show the effects of meditation in different study groups.
