Yoga and meditation reduce chronic pain
Participants in an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course reported significant improvement in levels of pain, depression and disability
October 1, 2020
Science Daily/American Osteopathic Association
A mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course was found to benefit patients with chronic pain and depression, leading to significant improvement in participant perceptions of pain, mood and functional capacity, according to a study in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. Most of the study respondents (89%) reported the program helped them find ways to better cope with their pain while 11% remained neutral.
Chronic pain is a common and serious medical condition affecting an estimated 100 million people in the United States, which correlates with annual costs of approximately $635 billion. The small-scale study was conducted in a semi-rural population in Oregon where issues of affordability, addiction and access to care are common. Participants received intensive instruction in mindfulness meditation and mindful hatha yoga during an eight-week period.
"Many people have lost hope because, in most cases, chronic pain will never fully resolve," says Cynthia Marske, DO, an osteopathic physician and director of graduate medical education at the Community Health Clinics of Benton and Linn County. "However, mindful yoga and meditation can help improve the structure and function of the body, which supports the process of healing."
Healing and curing are inherently different, explains Dr. Marske.
"Curing means eliminating disease, while healing refers to becoming more whole," Dr. Marske says. "With chronic pain, healing involves learning to live with a level of pain this is manageable. For this, yoga and meditation can be very beneficial."
The study found mindful meditation and yoga led to significant improvements in patients' perceptions of pain, depression and disability. Following the course, Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) scores, a standard measure of depression, dropped by 3.7 points on a 27-point scale. According to Dr. Marske, some patients experience a similar drop from the use of an antidepressant.
"Chronic pain often goes hand-in-hand with depression," says Dr. Marske. "Mindfulness-based meditation and yoga can help restore both a patient's mental and physical health and can be effective alone or in combination with other treatments such as therapy and medication."
Study participants received instruction in MBSR, a systematic educational program based on training people to have an awareness of the self in the present moment and a nonjudgmental manner. The findings bolster other evidence that MBSR can be a useful adjunctive treatment for chronic pain while improving perceived depression.
"The bottom line is that patients are seeking new ways to cope with chronic pain and effective non-pharmaceutical treatments are available," says Dr. Marske. "Our findings show meditation and yoga can be a viable option for people seeking relief from chronic pain."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201001133227.htm
Adults with mild cognitive impairment can learn and benefit from mindfulness meditation
August 15, 2019
Science Daily/Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center
A pilot study shows promising evidence that adults with MCI can learn to practice mindfulness meditation, and by doing so may boost their cognitive reserve.
There's currently no known way to prevent older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from developing Alzheimer's disease.
But there may be a safe and feasible non-pharmacological treatment that may help patients living with MCI, according to a small pilot study in the current issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease led by a neurologist and researcher with Wake Forest Baptist Health.
"Until treatment options that can prevent the progression to Alzheimer's are found, mindfulness meditation may help patients living with MCI," said Rebecca Erwin Wells, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of neurology at Wake Forest School of Medicine, a practicing neurologist at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and associate director of clinical research for its Center for Integrative Medicine. "Our study showed promising evidence that adults with MCI can learn to practice mindfulness meditation, and by doing so may boost their cognitive reserve."
Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment, non-judgemental awareness of thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.
"While the concept of mindfulness meditation is simple, the practice itself requires complex cognitive processes, discipline and commitment," Wells explained. "This study suggests that the cognitive impairment in MCI is not prohibitive of what is required to learn this new skill."
Research has demonstrated that high levels of chronic stress negatively impact the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory and learning, and are associated with increased incidence of MCI and Alzheimer's. Other studies have indicated that non-drug interventions such as aerobic exercise can have positive effects on cognition, stress levels and the brain.
To test whether a mindfulness-based stress-reduction (MBSR) program could benefit adults with MCI, the study team enlisted 14 men and women between the ages of 55 and 90 with clinically diagnosed MCI and randomized them to either an eight-week course involving mindfulness meditation and yoga or a "waiting list" control group.
The researchers previously reported that the nine participants who completed the MBSR program showed trends toward improvements on measures of cognition and well-being and indications of positive impacts on the hippocampus as well as other areas of the brain associated with cognitive decline.
The newly published study adds context to those quantitative findings with a qualitative analysis of the MBSR participants' responses in interviews conducted at the end of the eight-week course.
"While the MBSR course was not developed or structured to directly address MCI, the qualitative interviews revealed new and important findings specific to MCI," Wells said. "The participants' comments and ratings showed that most of them were able to learn the key tenets of mindfulness, demonstrating that the memory impairment of MCI does not preclude learning such skills."
Those participants who practiced at least 20 minutes a day were most likely to have understood the underlying concepts of mindfulness, Wells noted.
The limitations of the study include the small sample size and that the results may not generalize to all patients with MCI, as two-thirds of the participants in this study had a college education or more. Additional research is needed to further test the preliminary hypotheses contained in this study.
The research was originally conducted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and Harvard Medical School. The study was supported by the Harvard Medical School Osher Research Center, the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health of the National Institutes of Health
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190815140852.htm
Mindfulness-based therapy may reduce stress in overweight and obese individuals
July 7, 2017
Science Daily/Wiley
In a randomized clinical trial of women who were overweight or obese, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) increased mindfulness and decreased stress compared with health education. In addition, fasting blood sugar levels decreased within the MBSR group, but not within the health education group.
In the study, 86 women were randomized to 8 weeks of MBSR or health education, and they were followed for 16 weeks. While MBSR significantly reduced stress and had beneficial effects on blood sugar levels, there were no significant changes in blood pressure, weight, or insulin resistance.
"Our study suggests that MBSR lowers perceived stress and blood sugar in women with overweight or obesity. This research has wider implications regarding the potential role of MBSR in the prevention and treatment of diabetes in patients with obesity," said Dr. Nazia Raja-Khan, lead author of the Obesity study.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170707070447.htm