A study conducted by researches at the Radboud University a Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, published in the “Proceedings of the Natoonal Academy of Sciences”, shows that the autonomous nervous system and the immune system may be influenced by respiration and meditation techniques. The research conducted by the group of  Matthijs Kox was done on 24 volunteers, half of which followed a 10-day specific training, while the other half formed the control group.  After the 10 days, a bacterial toxin was injected into every participant to test the immune response.

The blood samples of the volunteers that ha followed the 10-day training course had higher adrenaline and anti-inflammatory cytochine IL-10, and lower levels of  IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-α  (proinflammatory cytochines.  Clinically they observed less flu-type symptoms to the toxin.

These results imply the possibility to use this technique as a support therapy in anti-aging where there is a presence of chronic inflammation and in autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory intestinal diseases, so reducing the use of pharmaceuticals.