The Science Of Sounds

Plus: how to lower your blood pressure

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The 10almonds Team
May 12, 2024

In partnership with

10almonds top tip: black pepper contains piperine, which improves absorption of many nutrients from food. Try to have at least a little with every meal!

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

  • Meditation can give a lot of benefits, especially (poetically enough, but also scientifically) for the heart and brain.

    • Today’s main feature looks examines the evidence-base for mantra meditation, which has some benefits different from the more popular-in-the-West (and itself very laudable) mindfulness meditation

    • Benefits can include vagus nerve stimulation (and with it, activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, producing a whole-body relaxation).

  • If you've wanted to enjoy cannabis but have been put off by the harshness of smoking or vaping, you're not alone.

    • Today’s sponsor Mood are offering federally-legal rapid-onset THC gummies that can have you “feeling right” in just 5 minutes

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE

Heart Rate Zones

What are they, and how can you benefit from incorporating them into your exercise routine?

BONUS: this time the link is correct!

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

How To Lower Your Blood Pressure (Cardiologists Explain)

Prefer text? The above video link will take you to a 10almonds page with a text version as well as the video!

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

❓️ THIS OR THAT?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between black tea and green tea—a win/win choice, but ultimately we picked the black tea (click here to read about why), as did 22% of you! (We know, green tea has good PR 😉)

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

💬 MAIN FEATURE

We Think You Might Like The Sound Of This…

We also reviewed a great book on a related topic:

(yes, that’s the same neuroscientist that we featured as an expert talking about The Five Keys of Aging Healthily)

But what happens when we combine the two?

Mantra meditation & music

Most scientific studies that have been undertaken with regard to meditation tend to focus on mindfulness meditation. It’s easy, effective, and (which makes a difference when it comes to publication bias) is a very safe bet when it comes to funding.

However, today we’re going to look at mantra meditation, which has a lot in common, neurologically speaking, with music. Indeed, when the two were compared separately in a randomized control trial:

❝Daily mantra meditation or classical music listening may be beneficial for cognitive outcomes and quality of life of breast cancer survivors with cancer-related cognitive impairment.

The cognitive benefits appear to be sustained beyond the initial intervention period.❞

One possible reason for some of the similar benefits is the vagus nerve—whether intoning a mantra, or humming along to music, the vibrations can stimulate the vagus nerve, which in turn activates the parasympathetic nervous system, resulting in body-wide relaxation:

How effective is mantra meditation?

According to a large recent narrative review, it depends on your goal:

❝Based on the studies in the four important areas presented, there is no doubt of a strong connection between mantra meditation and human health.

Strong evidence has been found that practicing mantra meditation is effective in relieving stress and in coping with hypertension.

For the other two areas: anxiety and immunity, the evidence is inconclusive or not strong enough to firmly support the claim that the mantra meditation can be used to reduce anxiety or to improve immunity. ❞

👆 this is a very interesting read if you do have the time!

How do I practice mantra meditation?

The definition is broad, but the critical criteria are:

  1. You meditate…

  2. …using a mantra

Lest that seem flippant: those really are the two key points!

Meditation comes in various forms, and mantra meditation is a form of focussed meditation. While some focussed meditation forms may use a candle or some other focal point, in mantra meditation, the mantra itself provides the focus.

You may be wondering: what should the mantra be?

Classic and well-tested mantras include such simple things as the monosyllabic Sanskrit “Om” or “Ham”. We’re a health science newsletter, so we’ll leave esoteric meanings to other publications as they are beyond our scope, but we will say that these result, most naturally, in the humming sound that we mentioned earlier stimulates the vagus nerve.

But that’s not the only way. Practitioners of religions that have repetitive prayer systems (e.g. anything that uses prayer beads, for example) also provide the basis of focused meditation, using a mantra (in this case, usually a very short oft-repeated prayer phrase).

How long is needed for benefits?

Most studies into mantra meditation have used timed sessions of 15–30 minutes, with 20 minutes being a commonly-used session length, once per day. However…

  • Vagus nerve benefits should appear a lot more quickly than that (under 5 minutes) in the case of mantras that cause that vibration we mentioned.

  • Repetitive spoken prayers (or similar repeated short phrases, for the irreligious) will generally effect relaxation in whatever period of time it takes for your brain to be fully focused on what you are doing now, instead of what you were thinking about before. If using counting beads, you can experiment to find what seems to work well for you.

(again, as a health science publication, we cannot comment on any otherworldly benefits, but the worldly benefits seem reason enough to consider these practices for their potential therapeutic effects)

10almonds tip: for any meditative practice that you want to take approximately a given period of time, we recommend investing in a nice sand timer like this one, as this will not result in a jarring alarm going off!

Like to jazz things up a little?

Enjoy: Meditation That You’ll Actually Enjoy ← Meditation games!

Prefer to keep things to the basics?

Enjoy: No Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness ← The simplest scientific approach

Take care!

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❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

The Science-Backed Anti-Inflammatory Diet for Beginners: A Hassle-Free Guide and Simple Meal Plan To Enhance Immunity, Optimize Gut Health, and Reduce Chronic Pain at Any Age – by Dr. Yasmine Elamir & Dr. William Grist

We have written about how to eat to beat inflammation, but what we didn't do is include 75 recipes and a plan for building up one's culinary repertoire around those core dishes!

That's what this book does. It covers briefly the science of inflammation and anti-inflammatory diet, discusses experimental elimination diets (e.g. you eliminate likely culprits of triggering your inflammation, then reintroduce them one by one to see which it was), and ingredients likely to increase or decrease inflammation.

The 75 recipes are good, and/but a caveat is "yes, one of the recipes is ketchup and another is sour cream" so it's not exactly 75 mains.

However! Where this book excels is in producing anti-inflammatory versions of commonly inflammatory dishes. That ketchup? Not sugary. The sour cream? Vegan. And so forth. We also see crispy roast potatoes, an array of desserts, and sections for popular holiday dishes too, so you will not need to be suddenly inflamed into the next dimension when it comes to festive eating.

The recipes are what the title claims them to be, "science-backed anti-inflammatory", and that is clearly the main criterion for their inclusion. They are not by default vegan, vegetarian, dairy-free, nut-free, gluten-free, etc. For this reason, all recipes are marked with such tags as "V, VG, DF, GF, EF, NF" etc as applicable.

Bottom line: we'd consider this book more of a jumping-off point than a complete repertoire, but it's a very good jumping-off point, and will definitely get you "up and running" (there's a 21-day meal plan, for example).

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Wishing you a peaceful Sunday,

The 10almonds Team