Working on the mind can help your body cope with stress. A stress hormone called cortisol is released in the hair which also provides information about how much a person is burdened by persistent stress. Research found that mental training reduces the concentration of the stress hormone cortisol in hair.

Previous research on the benefits of training had relied on self-reports from study participants or had been demonstrated in extremely stressful circumstances or on certain days. The present study, conducted by researchers at Leipzig’s Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, offers the first concrete proof that mental training lessens the physical symptoms of prolonged stress.

Mindfulness training to reduce everyday stress in the long term

A Techniker Krankenkasse research found that 23% of Germans experience stress on a regular basis. In addition to negatively impacting the health of those who have it, this condition is associated with several physiological illnesses, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and psychological disorders like depression, which is one of the main causes of illness burden worldwide.

As a result, practical ways to lessen daily stress are being looked for. A potentially beneficial alternative is mindfulness training, which involves practicing various forms of meditation and behavioural exercises to help people develop their social and cognitive abilities, such as compassion, gratitude, and attentiveness.

What is mindfulness?

Being mindful involves being aware of one’s environment and inner states. By teaching people to observe their thoughts, feelings, and other in-the-moment sensations without passing judgment or responding automatically, mindfulness can help people avoid harmful or automatic habits and responses.

Numerous therapeutic methods employ mindfulness, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction, mindfulness-based cognitive behaviour therapy, and mindfulness-based meditation.

The reason behind using physiological methods to measure the stress-reducing effect

Studies have previously demonstrated that following a standard eight-week training program, even healthy individuals experience reduced levels of stress. However, the extent to which the training lessens the ongoing weight of daily stress has not yet been established. The issue with a lot of earlier research on chronic stress is that, following training, study participants were frequently asked to rate their own stress levels. However, this self-reporting through questionnaires might have skewed the results, giving the impression that they were better than they were.

The explanation for this bias is that the participants were aware that they were practicing mindfulness, and that one goal of this training was to lower stress levels. Merely having this awareness affects later information. “If you are asked whether you are stressed after a training session that is declared as stress-reducing, even addressing this question can distort the statements,” explains Lara Puhlmann, a doctoral student at MPI CBS and first author of the underlying publication, which has now appeared in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

Here, social desirability and placebo effects were important factors. Blinded research—in which study participants are unaware of whether they have received the active ingredient or not—is not feasible in mental training, in contrast to pharmacological investigations, for instance. “The participants know that they are ingesting the ‘antidote’,” says Puhlmann. “In mindfulness research, we are therefore increasingly using more objective, i.e. physiological, methods to measure the stress-reducing effect more precisely.”

Cortisol in hair is a measure of exposure to prolonged stress

One appropriate indicator of persistent stress exposure is the amount of cortisol present in hair. For example, when faced with an overwhelming challenge, our bodies release the hormone cortisol. In that case, it aids in arousing our bodies and directing our energy to meet the challenge. An elevated concentration of cortisol circulates throughout our body for a longer period during stressful situations, and it builds up more in our hair. Hair grows one centimeter a month on average.

In collaboration with Clemens Kirschbaum’s working group at the University of Dresden, the researchers examined the quantity of cortisol in the first three centimeters of hair, starting at the scalp, every three months to gauge the study participants’ stress levels during the nine-month training period.

Prof. Dr. Tania Singer, the scientific director of the Social Neuroscience Research Group, oversaw the development of the mental training itself as part of the ReSource project, a large-scale longitudinal investigation on the effects of mental training. Three three-month sessions made up this nine-month mental training program. Each session focused on developing a particular skill area with a combination of Far Eastern and Western mental exercises. Either attention and mindfulness characteristics, socio-affective skills like gratitude and compassion, or so-called socio-cognitive abilities—particularly the capacity to see one’s own and other people’s perspectives—were the main topics of discussion. Each of the three groups, consisting of roughly 80 participants, finished the training modules in a different order. The course ran for six days a week, thirty minutes a day, for a maximum of nine months.

Less stress, less cortisol

It was evident that the patient’s hair had much less cortisol after six months of training—an average reduction of 25 percent. Effects were initially mild in the first three months and were more pronounced in the subsequent three months. In the last third, the concentration remained at a low level. Thus, the researchers believe that the intended stress-reduction effects can only be achieved by training over a long enough period. The impact did not appear to be influenced by the training’s subject matter. Therefore, it’s feasible that a few of the mental strategies investigated can help people cope better with ongoing stress daily.

The same sample was used in a previous study from the ReSource project where the researchers investigated how training affected the participants’ ability to handle acute stressful situations. In this study, individuals had to complete challenging arithmetic problems while being observed during a stressful job interview. According to the findings, individuals who had received socio-cognitive or socio-affective training emitted up to 51% less cortisol during stressful situations than those who had not. In this instance, the patient’s acute salivary cortisol surges were measured rather than the quantity of cortisol in their hair. Overall, the researchers find that both acute, highly stressful social events and chronic, everyday stress can be better managed with training. “We assume that different training aspects are particularly helpful for these different forms of stress,” says Veronika Engert, head of the research group “Social Stress and Family Health” at MPI CBS.

“There are many diseases worldwide, including depression, that are directly or indirectly related to long-term stress,” explains Puhlmann. “We need to work on counteracting the effects of chronic stress in a preventive way. Our study uses physiological measurements to prove that meditation-based training interventions can alleviate general stress levels even in healthy individuals.”

Story Source:

Materials provided by Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

Lara M.C. Puhlmann, Pascal Vrtička, Roman Linz, Tobias Stalder, Clemens Kirschbaum, Veronika Engert, Tania Singer. Contemplative Mental Training Reduces Hair Glucocorticoid Levels in a Randomized Clinical Trial. Psychosomatic Medicine, 2021; 83 (8): 894 DOI: 10.1097/PSY.0000000000000970

Page citation:

Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. “Meditation training reduces long-term stress, hair analysis shows.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 October 2021. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211007122203.htm>.

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