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I could have sworn that I read fairly recently that letting your mind wander for a while everyday lets us increase our creativity and improves the time we actually spend focusing on something by having a little mental downtime.
You are correct. Allowing your mind to relax a few minutes now and then does improve creativity and does actually help you focus better later. However, if your mind does not focus well at all and wanders significantly most of the time, then you have a career in politics or as a judge. If you absolutely must focus on something 100% of the time, it says you have a career in journalism. You do not have to focus on any one particular thing. Just focus on something without deviating off subject. Most writers of pornographic stories are also able to focus 100% of the time.
Yeah, I remember reading an article on how to.... Oh look a bunny!!
My understanding of telomeres is that they never get longer. Only shorter.
Quick Biology lesson:
Telomeres are long strings of nonsense DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes. They serve no purpose (as far as we know) other than to provide a place for the enzyme responsible for copying DNA to attach to.
Telomeres get shorter every replication because the enzyme responsible for copying DNA can't copy the part that it is attached to. After many replications, the Telomeres will be gone completely and then the enzyme responsible for copying DNA will have to attach to important, non-nonsense DNA. Since this DNA is no longer copied, whatever genes that DNA controlled no longer work perfectly. On the macro-scale, we see this as aging.
The only way to lengthen Telomeres is through the action of an enzyme called Telomerase. Telomerase isn't active in humans except when they are very very young (like, not even born yet young) and there is no way to re-activate it except through drugs or gene therapy. Yoga, Meditation, Omega-3 Fish Oil, and any of the other remedies suggested in this article will do absolutely nothing to "lengthen your telomeres." At the very best, they will reduce stress on your body, thus reducing cells need to replicate, thus preserving the telomeres you have.
Furthermore, this article completely misinterpreted the findings of that study. Your wandering mind doesn't cause your telomeres to shorten. It's just that people who have wandering minds are probably very busy and under stress. Likewise, people that are unhappy are under stress. The more stress you are under, the harder your body has to work to repair itself. The more your body repairs itself, the shorter your telomeres get.
You are absolutely correct, Scubasteve. Wandering mind may be an indication of stress, and stress is likely what is reducing telomere length. If someone learns to "focus" better, it's not going to affect telomere length. That's just pseudoscience! This article is worthless.
I have always wondered why one of the first signs my depression is coming back is problems concentrating. I go through concentration problems, anxiety, even fidgeting long before I start to feel depressed.
This article is telling us something we already intuitively know, namely that stress affects concentration. But the idea that we can do anything about telomere length is ludicrous.
Even if this study was large or diverse, the results would be very fishy. Wandering thoughts are correlated with both unhappiness and shorter telomeres? Any reason not to assume that unhappiness causes biochemical stresses that lead to shorter telomeres, and wandering thoughts have no causal relationship to either? It is already well known that people with depression get more of the "Western" degenerative diseases. I suppose if you're unhappy and find your mind wandering, it will really help you get back in line and focus to think several times a day, "Oh God, I was just daydreaming, that means my telomeres are getting shorter and I'm gonna diiieeeee!"
That explains it ...
What did George Carlin say about letting children daydream? That it's good for them? Well, why wouldn't the same be true for adults. If it weren't for daydreaming and wandering mind, I wouldn't be able to draw the different ideas that come to mind.
Are you serious? Well, in my opinion ... wait a minute just got a text message ...
What if my wandering mind is what makes me happy?
At some point, focusing on the problem(s) becomes counter-productive. Then I find a really good book and read. Terry Pratchett is a good choice if you want an absorbing story with humor and I recently discovered E. Paul Wilson for action with a dose of speculative fiction. Classic SF is always a good choice, too. I've loaded my Nook with about 1,000 really good books, so I don't even need a nightlight. It stays plugged in on the nightstand, ready to distract me from the 'mental hamster wheel' late at night.
To generalize on what Scubasteve58001 put so well, two fundamental logic flaws apepar to underlie this article, along with so many others on health science issues). One is the classic correlation vs. causation. The other, which I'll call "it doesn't quite work that way," is manifest in the implication that telomeres can be actively lengthened and doing so will make you live longer.
Because of these two flaws, and the prevalence of them, I find most non-technical articles on health issues to be essentially useless, except perhaps for entertainment purposes.
Don't even get me started on the misconceptions (no pun intended) and erroneous generalizations we have about DNA and an individual's characteristics!