By reducing people’s experiences of stress, mindfulness may help regulate the physical stress response and ultimately reduce the risk and severity of stress-related diseases. (Credit: Joshua Earle via Unsplash)

“Studies have shown that mindfulness training can boost a range of mental and physical health problems, but how it works hasn’t been clear.

“Now, researchers have developed a model suggesting that mindfulness influences health via stress reduction pathways. The work, published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, describes the biological pathways linking mindfulness training with reduced stress and stress-related disease outcomes.

“‘If mindfulness training is improving people’s health, how does it get under the skin to affect all kinds of outcomes?’ asks J. David Creswell, associate professor of psychology Carnegie Mellon University. ‘We offer one of the first evidence-based biological accounts of mindfulness training, stress reduction, and health.’”

Click here to read this Futurity.org article in its entirety.