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A comment on Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health. Parent comment

Re:Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health by DennisP on Friday May 22, 2020 @06:18PM (#23277705)
I've been meditating for two years, have found similar benefits, and I'm sure it's not a function of age because sometimes I stop for a while and the benefits go away. It doesn't seem like placebo either, because previously I'd tried other meditation techniques that weren't nearly so beneficial.

There's a fair amount of peer-reviewed research on the benefits of mindfulness meditation, and it doesn't seem all that unlikely that exercising your brain in different ways really can help your brain function differently.

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Re:Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health by lotsofpulp on Friday May 22, 2020 @06:39PM (#23277877)
Research involving brains, feelings, and other difficult if not impossible to define parameters is not rigorous.
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Re:Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health by irbajn on Friday May 22, 2020 @06:45PM (#23277932)
How do you propose studying brains, feelings, etc.? We just shouldn't bother?
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Re:Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health by lotsofpulp on Friday May 22, 2020 @07:38PM (#23278356)
I don't know. I don't mind people taking a stab at it, but it should still be looked at skeptically, especially once you move away from measurable metrics as it ceases to be science.
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Re:Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health by austinjp on Friday May 22, 2020 @08:49PM (#23278758)
The subjectivity of experience doesn't prevent something being science.

How might someone conduct a blinded placebo controlled trial of a suicide prevention campaign, or of parental advice to help reduce risk of cot death, for example?

They wouldn't. They'd roll up their sleeves and get deeply involved in the messy, unpredictable world of human emotion and social interaction.

And that's good and appropriate, and there are effective and responsible methods for doing it.

Just because we can point to something and say "aha, that's subjective" doesn't mean we need to eliminate it. In fact, the more we try to eliminate it, the harder it becomes to translate evidence from the lab to the real world.

Objectivity world be nice, but it's vanishingly rare.

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Re:Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health by DennisP on Saturday May 23, 2020 @08:24AM (#23282358)
What if it shows physical changes? E.g. "Effects of Long-Term Mindfulness Meditation on Brain's White Matter Microstructure and its Aging"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4712309/

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Re:Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health by technocratius on Saturday May 23, 2020 @01:51AM (#23280297)
Well, when it comes to studying breathing techniques and their effect over time you can quite easily do a large scale randomized controlled trial and survey participants on perceived increase in well-being, right?
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Re:Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health by lotsofpulp on Saturday May 23, 2020 @07:18AM (#23282015)
The track record of studies using “perceived” statistics is not good. Humans are subject to an endless list of biases.
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Re:Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health by partyboat1586 on Friday May 22, 2020 @07:42PM (#23278383)
Do you believe in the psychological benefit of exercise? That has all the same study problems as meditation.
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Re:Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health by lotsofpulp on Saturday May 23, 2020 @07:20AM (#23282027)
Replacing the word believe with assume, I assume studies about the psychological benefits of exercise are just as weak as any other psychological study.
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