How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [20]
Caffeine may even lengthen your life,64 but there are studies showing that more than two cups may have a variety of side effects. It may cause migraines for chronic users,65 and it appears to weaken bone structure due to the fact that caffeine leaches calcium from your body66 Caffeine tablets can also be toxic, and although rare, a caffeine overdose can kill you.67
For those who don't like coffee, green and black tea will also improve your cognition and mental health.68 It has most of the physiological benefits associated with coffee, plus the added benefit of lowering blood pressure.69 It also has another ingredient, theanine, that enhances neural cognition.70
Finally, don't forget about water. Drink plenty of it, especially if you are exercising, because dehydration appears to impair cognition, motor coordination, and mood.71 However, other evidence suggests that any changes—positive or negative—caused by moderate water deprivation are minor.72
Before we close this chapter, I want to bring up an important but often overlooked point. What you choose to meditate upon, or pray for, can do more than change your brain. You can damage it, especially if you choose to focus on something that makes you frightened or angry. In psychology this is called “rumination,” and it is clearly hazardous to your health.73 In a Stanford brain-scan study, people who focused on negative aspects of themselves, or on a negative interpretation of life, had increased activity in their amygdala. This generated waves of fear, releasing a torrent of destructive neurochemicals into the brain.
Fortunately, meditation is the opposite of rumination and, in some ways, is similar to the psychoanalytic model of free association created by Freud. In meditation, as in therapy, we learn to watch our negativity and not react to it. In the process, we train the brain to remain calm, even in the face of adversity. Thus, meditation becomes an exemplary way to reevaluate life's difficulties and mysteries. But perhaps most important, it trains the mind to become less attached to its own desires, attachments, and beliefs. When this happens, the way we see ourselves and the world will change.
∗ The term “Kirtan” refers to a North Indian style of devotional singing, and so the mantra is spoken lyrically, not chanted. You can read more about Kirtan Kriya and listen to the version we used in our study at www.alzheimersprevention.org.
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WHAT DOES GOD DO
TO YOUR BRAIN?
The Neural Varieties of Spiritual Practice
The moment we encounter God, or the idea of God, our brain begins to change. For most American children this occurs in the first year of life when they come face-to-face with holiday religious symbolism. Brightly colored Christmas trees and Easter baskets rivet a child's attention, and this imprints a permanent image into memory. Later, when they are introduced to parental concepts of God, these ideas become neurologically connected to earlier memories and thoughts. Images build upon images, and concepts build upon concepts, until a complex neurological circuit emerges that represents a primitive system of religious belief.
Storytelling may deepen a child's fantasy about God, but rituals give personal meaning to theological ideas. That is why religious parents ask their children to pray, and why they expose them to religious ceremonies and events. We take them to our temples, churches, and mosques on the high holidays, where their senses are saturated with the sights, sounds, and smells of our spiritual heritage and beliefs. They gaze through stained-glass windows, sing hymns in foreign tongues, light candles, bow down in prayer, and sample sacramental foods. They literally enter another world. God becomes even more grand and mysterious—and sometimes frightening—and new parts of the brain light up like a fireworks display.
Rituals add substance to our beliefs, and the more intense the ritual, the more likely we are to have a religious