Top 21 Benefits of Meditation

From an anti-aging site, the top 21 benefits of meditation.  The article goes into some detail on each of these.

1. Meditation reduces stress, ruminative thoughts, appraisals of threat, increases compassion, and may slow the rate of cellular aging
2. Meditation reduces heart rate, ambulatory blood pressure and stress-induced hypertension
3. Meditation reduces carotid artery intimal thickness (CIMT)
4. Meditation lowers lipid peroxide levels in the blood
5. Meditation improves Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
6. Meditation increases melatonin levels, which helps you sleep. Melatonin also prevents cellular senescence and activates SIRT1 gene expression
7. Meditation increases telomerase activity by 43%
8. Meditation effectively treats Depression with the same “effect size” as medication
9. Meditation reduces mortality 
10. Meditation down-regulates pro-inflammatory genes – COX2 and RIPK2
11. Meditation increases DHEA levels and reverses its age-related decline by 5-10 years 
12. Meditation increases the size of the brain
13. Meditation increases Activity in the Brain’s “Attention Center”
14. Meditation Deactivates (decreases activity) in the Brain’s “Daydreaming Center”, also known as the “Default Mode Network”
15. Breathing Rate with Meditation Determines the size change of a very specific area under the occipitotemporal lobe.  Breathing rate decreases with increasing experience of the meditator
16. Meditation can reduce Chronic Pain
17. Meditation can reduce anxiety
18. Meditation is an “Epigenetic Drug, changing gene expression
19. Meditation can reduce stress in caregivers of those taking care of dementia patients and handicapped patents or children
20. Meditation changes gene expression in peripheral blood lymphocytes
21. Meditation reduces Loneliness in elderly adults