How healthy is meditating, and what exactly does it do for you?

Meditation is most beneficial for depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. This has been robustly demonstrated across multiple review studies. The effects are small to moderate: for depression, symptom severity decreased after eight weeks with an effect size of approximately 0.30, and for anxiety with 0.38. After three to six months this weakens somewhat, to 0.23 and 0.22 respectively, but in a portion of people the benefit persists for six months or longer.^1,2,3

For chronic pain the effect size is comparable: around 0.33. Note that this concerns how you experience pain, not its physical cause. The pain itself does not disappear as a result.¹

What does meditating do for your mind? One study in beginners showed that thirteen minutes per day over eight weeks resulted in better attention, improved working memory, and greater control over emotions. After four weeks nothing was noticeable yet. This is a promising finding, but it comes from a single study, so do not draw firm conclusions from it just yet.⁴

In a study involving 159 people with Parkinson's disease, an eight-week programme led to less anxiety, fewer motor symptoms, and a lower level of an inflammatory marker in the blood. On the measure of depression, meditation outperformed yoga, and the improvement lasted longer. Interesting, but again: one study is not definitive proof.⁵

For sleep, weight, eating habits, and substance use, the evidence is currently too weak to rely on, despite all the positive stories online. Meditation has also not been proven to be better than medication, exercise, or therapy. It works best as a complement to those approaches, not as a replacement. Long-term side effects have barely been studied in the research.^1,2