Improving Mindfulness, Quality of Life, and Controlling Cellular Aging through Meditation

*Nirodhi Namika Dasanayaka, Nirmala Dushyanthi Sirisena and Nilakshi Samaranayake*

### **Abstract**

Many people suffer from stress and anxiety due to complex lifestyles. Stress is one of the main causes of various diseases. In addition, it causes a lower level of consciousness, quality of life, and a higher rate of cellular aging. Meditation becomes a trending topic to overcome these problems. Key terms including "Meditation," "Mindfulness," "Quality of life," "Telomere," and "Telomerase" were used to search literature in PubMed, Medline, and Google scholar databases. Meditation is cheap, viable, and simple mental training. Several studies have been conducted on the effects of meditation on well-being, including mindfulness level, quality of life, and cellular aging. Accordingly, many of these studies suggest that meditation practice can improve well-being and may help control cellular aging. Though meditation showed various physiological and psychological benefits, the mechanism behind the meditation and these benefits still remains unclear. However, by reducing a person's stress level, meditation can improve mindfulness, develop quality of life, and reduce cellular aging.

**Keywords:** mindfulness, quality of life, telomere length, telomerase, (hTERT and hTR) OR (gene expression)

## **1. Introduction**

Mindfulness could be defined as "paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally" [1]. This includes the awareness of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and surrounding nature. Mindfulness helps to pay attention to thoughts and sensations without judging them and aids to keep the mind in the present moment by avoiding disturbances caused by past memories and future imaginations. The capacity for mindfulness within an individual can be increased or decreased. Mindfulness plays a key role in reducing stress, boosting memory, improving cognition, and producing various other positive psychological outcomes. There are three axioms of mindfulness, that is, intention, attention, and attitude. The intention is the vision of a person, and attention refers to the present-moment awareness of internal and external experiences. Equanimity and acceptance are called attitude [2].

The quality of life of a person is mainly hinged on their physical health, psychological state, level of independence, and social relationships to noticeable characteristics of the environment [3]. According to World Health Organization, quality of life can be defined as "an individual's perception of their position in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns" [4]. Wealth, employment, environment, physical and mental health, education, safety, beliefs, recreation, and freedom are some of the examples for standard indicators of the quality of life. Most of the researchers have been developing and/or using different methods such as scales to measure the quality of life. Out of these quality-of-life measuring instruments, the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL) can be considered as a broader measure of overall quality of life, which was developed by collaborating a large number of psychologists, including physical, psychological, social relationship, and environment [5]. The physical health domain focuses on pain and discomfort, sleep and rest, energy and fatigue, mobility, activities of daily living, depending on medicinal substances and medical aids, and work capacity. Secondly, the psychological domain considers positive feelings, thinking, learning, memory and concentration, self-esteem, body image and appearance, negative feelings, and spirituality/religion/personal beliefs. The social relationships domain emphasizes on personal relationships, social support, and sexual activity. Finally, freedom, physical safety and security, home environment, financial resources, health and social care accessibility and quality, opportunities for acquiring new information and skills, participation in and opportunities for recreation/leisure activity, physical environment, and transport belong to the environment domain.

Telomeres are biomarkers of cellular aging, which are located at the termini of the chromosomes. They are simple repeat DNA sequence tracts (TTAGGG) n, which functioned as protective end caps of linear chromosomes. When considering the somatic cells, it was reported that telomeres have 5 kb to 15 kb in length. The length of these telomeres gets shorter gradually with each cell division due to the loss of DNA tracts. Telomere length is maintained either enzymatically or by a recombination mechanism. Though the average overall telomere length is partially a hereditary characteristic [6], it depends on various factors, such as a reflective history of the cell lineage, exposure to stress, and oxidative damage. Human telomerase enzyme adds the DNA tracts to the end of the existing DNA tracts, thus control the length of the telomeres. It can be easily found in germ cells while a low amount can be detected in totipotent cells. However, most of the differentiated cells do not contain the telomerase enzyme. Human telomerase enzyme consists of two subunits, that is, hTERT and hTR. hTERT or human telomerase reverse transcriptase is the core protein that has a central catalytic domain and it encodes by the gene *TERT*. hTR is the RNA component of the telomerase enzyme, where it was dependent on the expression of *TERC* gene [7].

There are different types of interventions that are commonly used to improve mindfulness and quality of life and known as the mindfulness scale. In addition to mindfulness interventions, most of meditation interventions are also improving the mindfulness level/and quality of life with a reduce cellular aging [8]. A growing body of research targets on the effects of mindfulness or meditation interventions on reducing aging.

## **2. Methods**

A literature search was carried out for articles published in English in Google scholar, PubMed, and Medline databases from their inception to December, 30, 2022. "Meditation," "Mindfulness," "Quality of life," "Telomere," and "Telomerase" were used as key terms to search the databases without considering an exclusive study design.
