The effect of a single session of acute mindfulness meditation on endothelial function
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mindfulness meditation (MM) is associated with some improvements in cardiovascular health in addition to mental wellbeing. Vascular endothelial function, an indicator of overall cardiovascular health, is influenced strongly by sympathetic nervous activity that is altered by acute meditation. Only a few studies have noted that mindfulness improves the vascular endothelium after chronic mindfulness programs, however it is still unknown to what degree a single acute session of MM may affect endothelial function especially in young, healthy subjects. We hypothesized that an acute MM session would transiently improve endothelial function. Secondarily, we sought to characterize the meditative state using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain activity, heart rate variability (HRV) to measure autonomic activity, and MM questionnaires to assess subjective state mindfulness. Twelve healthy young adults (21 ± 2 years) with no meditation experience participated in two experimental visits each involving a 20-minute MM condition or an active control condition. We assessed endothelial function before and after each condition using reactive hyperemia-induced flow-mediated dilation (RH-FMD). We did not detect a change in endothelial function after MM or the active control (RH-FMD: p = 0.582), and MM did not stimulate an increase in EEG alpha power or HRV (alpha power: p = 0.568; HRV: p = 0.395). The subjective MM questionnaire revealed no change in state mindfulness after either condition (p = 0.800). We also correlated RH-FMD with both EEG alpha power and HRV during MM and found no significant relationships (RH-FMD versus alpha power: r2 = 0.39, p = 0.054; RH-FMD versus HRV: r2 = 0.39, p = 0.086). The secondary measures did not confirm that the subjects achieved the intended meditative state. It therefore remains unclear whether a successful MM can acutely improve endothelial function. The type of MM employed in an acute session may be the most critical factor for generating both cognitive and physiological effects in novice meditators. Further research is needed to determine whether a meditative state can transiently affect vascular endothelial function.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".