Meditation...effective gene therapy?

Hello all. I have been doing much research on meditation in the past few years. There are many forms and types of meditation out there. One, in particular, that has been banned in the country of China now for many years and has a severe punishment to those in China who are caught practicing this form of meditation is called Falun Gong. Interviews that have been conducted with Chinese people who do practice this, have raved about the benefits and on how much it helps them and strengthens them. This article, although I do not know who actually wrote it, was published in the Epoch Times on June 16, 2010. (www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/37370/). If you are a practicioner of Falun Gong or of meditation in general, feel free to comment on your views or feelings of it and the benefits you have or have not experienced. Brightest blessings and enjoy the info.

MEDITATION....effective gene therapy?

These days, scientific medical research ascribes many human diseases to cellular genomic mutation. Many scientists and doctors are working to find specific methodologies to modify these disordered genes. However, this isn’t a situation concerning only a few cells in the body. Therefore, correcting mutant genes in human bodies is not an easy thing.

Because normal and abnormal cells in patients are from the same origin, it’s very hard to distinguish between them. Although scientists try to use viruses, antibodies, or various other ways to recognize target proteins on mutant cells that are found only on abnormal cells to replace the disordered genes with healthy ones, it is extremely hard to accomplish this, and it is fraught with many possible complications. So, gene therapy is a dream without practical application in the foreseeable future.

In recent years, some scientists have changed their way of thinking about how to modify cellular activity. In a study published in 2005 in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, a group led by Dr. Lili Feng of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, found very apparent differences between Falun Gong practitioners and non-practitioners in gene expression and in neutrophil function. Neutrophils are white blood cells that play a pre-eminent roll in repelling microbial invaders.

According to the research paper, Falun Gong is an ancient Chinese qigong practice consisting of meditation and an emphasis on spiritual practice based on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. The paper cites a 1998 study, which says that Falun Gong has been reported to have miraculous impact on practitioners’ health.

The scientists used gene-chip technology to compare the expression of 12,000 genes between Falun Gong practitioners and non-practitioners. They found differential expression in more than 300 genes, in which the differences were tenfold or more. This is an uncommon phenomenon in cell biology research. For example, it’s known that normal cells and cancer cells are very different, because the DNA or the genome will have been divided too many times in tumor cells.

In their study, these researchers also found that the numbers of neutrophils in their samples from Falun Gong practitioners were reduced. Furthermore, the lifespan of neutrophils from ordinary healthy people is only two or three hours, but in Falun Gong practitioners, it could be as long as 60 hours.

They also observed, from their morphology, that practitioners’ neutrophils were more completely differentiated, unlike those from the general population whose neutrophils are usually eliminated before differentiation has finished, similar to someone who has accidentally died before the end of his or her lifespan. Those from the practitioners, however, lived until the end of their determinate life.

From these findings, we can surmise that the fewer neutrophils in the Falun Gong practitioners may serve to defend them from external infection more efficiently because their lives are longer. Since neutrophils aren’t needed as much in Falun Gong practitioners, the number of activations or re-activations of the immunoglobulin-secreting mechanism may not be as many as in non-practitioners. Thus, Falun Gong practitioners won’t have as high incidences of allergy, asthma, auto-immune disease, or other immune-mediated disorders.

Today’s greenways have been reduced because of the rampant building of factories, roads to ease ever-increasing traffic congestion, and other general consequences of urbanization. This kind of change in human beings’ living environment leads to constant stimulation of their immune systems by dust and easily promotes allergies. In fact, many children are hospitalized due to allergies. But doctors have found that it’s hard to cure allergies completely with any of the various available drug therapies.

One way to be freed from many diseases is to strengthen the immune system so that it can provide a real defense against invasion by bacteria. And in this study, scientists have found that Falun Gong cultivation is a great way to strengthen the immune system.

To read the research paper, please visit http://tinyurl.com/288nxgb
—PureInsight.org