SEATTLE—Announcing the conclusion of their landmark study, researchers from the University of Washington confirmed Tuesday that meditation can significantly reduce stress but added that they totally get it if you were just venting and weren’t actually looking for advice right now. “Based on a six-month double-blind study, we can state with a high degree of confidence that regular meditation can help reduce epinephrine and lead to decreased blood pressure, heart rate, and metabolism, but we’re not meaning to push that on you if you just needed to blow off some steam about how much you’ve got going on recently,” said lead researcher Emily Kurtz, noting that while entering a state of advanced relaxation has been shown to decrease the flow of cortisol and improve cardiovascular health, she and her fellow researchers weren’t trying to fix you or anything and understood if you just needed a sympathetic ear. “Our findings also suggest that the focused attention, deep breathing, and calm thoughts associated with meditation may even reduce the occurrence of ailments including asthma, chronic pain, and some forms of cancer, but again, maybe you’re just feeling frustrated and aren’t looking for a laundry list of self-improvement techniques, so we just wanted to mention our conclusions and we’ll leave it there.” Kurtz added that their research had also uncovered significant health risks associated with a sedentary lifestyle, but they could wait to talk about that until you were in a better mood.

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