Mindfulness program may benefit patients with irritable bowel syndrome
April 8, 2020
Science Daily/Wiley
Adults with irritable bowel syndrome experienced fewer gastrointestinal symptoms after they participated in a mindfulness program meant to reduce stress. Results of the study are published in Neurogastroenterology & Motility.
In the study, 53 women and 15 men with irritable bowel syndrome participated in an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction class.
Most participants experienced significant improvements from pre-treatment to 3 months follow up regarding gastrointestinal symptoms, quality of life, and anxiety related to gastrointestinal symptoms. Although increases in 3 of the 5 measured facets of mindfulness were found, increases in the ability to stay in the present moment and act with awareness seemed especially important.
"This study shows that people with irritable bowel syndrome can have significant improvements in their symptoms and quality of life without medication or diet change, just by participating in a mindfulness based stress reduction class," said senior author Kirsten Tillisch, MD, of the University of California, Los Angeles. "Further, it implicates a specific aspect of mindfulness as particularly important: acting with awareness. It appears that by improving this moment to moment awareness in their daily actions, people with irritable bowel syndrome feel better, possibly because this mindful activity in the present moment keeps the brain from going back to old fears or worries."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200408085521.htm
Music intervention and mindfulness reduces the effect of mental fatigue
March 6, 2020
Science Daily/University of Southern Denmark Faculty of Health Sciences
A new study demonstrates that just 12 minutes of binaural beats and 4 weeks of mindfulness training are effective recovery strategies to counteract the negative effects of mental fatigue on sustained attention.
Mental fatigue is a psychobiological state caused by prolonged periods of demanding cognitive activity which results in slower reaction times and attention deficits. It affects the ability to focus and impacts the capacity to make optimal decisions during a given task. Mental fatigue is often responsible for accidents in traffic or the workplace and can lead to poor study efficiency. We know that mindfulness has been shown to have a positive effect on stress-coping and cognitive performance. There is also cumulating evidence suggesting that listening to binaural beats may increase sustained attention. Binaural beats is an auditory illusion which has been framed as a class of cognitive and neural entrainment (Kirk et al., 2019). Even though there are different tones of different frequency (165Hz in the left and 179 Hz in the right) presented in each ear the participant will hear one tone, which is the amalgamated difference between the two tones (beta range of 14 Hz).
In a new study, Johanne L. Axelsen (SDU), Ulrich Kirk (SDU) and Walter Staiano (University of Valencia) tests the efficacy of binaural beats compared to mindfulness as a cognitive recovery strategy to counteract the negative effect of mental fatigue on sustained attention. The study also tests whether the mindfulness interventions will show an effect for the on-the-spot novice group or for the experienced mindfulness group, who have practiced mindfulness for 4 weeks in an online-based mindfulness program through the app Headspace.
There were five phases of the study, in the initial phase the participants' mood were assessed (BRUMS) and they completed a sustained attention task to measure their mind wandering (SART). The second phase consisted of the mental fatigue treatment for 90 minutes (AX-CPT). Immediately afterwards, the participants' mood was assessed again, and the two on-the-spot interventions followed: either listening to a guided mindfulness meditation track for 12 min. or an audio track (with binaural beats) for 12 min. The control group was asked to relax for 12 min. After this the effects of the interventions were tested using the sustained attention task.
The results showed that there was indeed an effect of on-the-spot binaural beats on sustained attention while in a state of experimentally induced mental fatigue. Interestingly, the experienced mindfulness group performed significantly better than the rest of the groups on the sustained attention task already before the mental fatigue was induced. Furthermore, the group's performance was better than that of the novice mindfulness group and the control group after the mental fatigue was induced.
The results, and results from previous work by Kirk et al. (2019), indicate that binaural beats may help suppress mind-wandering and sharpening of attentional focus, which in turn reduces the negative effect of mental fatigue. The individual might feel more relaxed and less affected by mental fatigue after listening to the music.
The same goes for the experienced mindfulness group, their mindfulness training already showed on the first task where they performed better than the rest of the groups. This could indicate that practicing mindfulness helps you focus on the task at hand and is effective in offering strategies to handling stressful situations and economizing of mental energy.
Therefore, the study demonstrates that just 12 minutes of binaural beats and 4 weeks of mindfulness training were effective recovery strategies to counteract the negative effects of mental fatigue on sustained attention.
The researchers are currently investigating whether listening to binaural beats for a longer period or practicing mindfulness will improve stressed individuals' heart rate variability (HRV) and if this has an effect on performance in specific cognitive tasks.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200306122509.htm
To stay positive, live in the moment -- but plan ahead
March 25, 2020
Science Daily/North Carolina State University
A recent study from North Carolina State University finds that people who manage to balance living in the moment with planning for the future are best able to weather daily stress without succumbing to negative moods.
"It's well established that daily stressors can make us more likely to have negative affect, or bad moods," says Shevaun Neupert, a professor of psychology at NC State and corresponding author of a paper on the recent work. "Our work here sheds additional light on which variables influence how we respond to daily stress."
Specifically, the researchers looked at two factors that are thought to influence how we handle stress: mindfulness and proactive coping.
Mindfulness is when people are centered and living in the moment, rather than dwelling in the past or worrying about the future. Proactive coping is when people engage in planning to reduce the likelihood of future stress.
To see how these factors influence responses to stress, the researchers looked at data from 223 study participants. The study included 116 people between the ages of 60 and 90, and 107 people between the ages of 18 and 36. All of the study participants were in the United States.
All of the study participants were asked to complete an initial survey in order to establish their tendency to engage in proactive coping. Participants were then asked to complete questionnaires for eight consecutive days that explored fluctuations in mindfulness. On those eight days, participants were also asked to report daily stressors and the extent to which they experienced negative mood.
The researchers found that engaging in proactive coping was beneficial at limiting the effect of daily stressors, but that this advantage essentially disappeared on days when a participant reported low mindfulness.
"Our results show that a combination of proactive coping and high mindfulness result in study participants of all ages being more resilient against daily stressors," Neupert says. "Basically, we found that proactive planning and mindfulness account for about a quarter of the variance in how stressors influenced negative affect.
"Interventions targeting daily fluctuations in mindfulness may be especially helpful for those who are high in proactive coping and may be more inclined to think ahead to the future at the expense of remaining in the present."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200325130650.htm
Oh my aching back: Do yoga, tai chi or qigong help?
February 6, 2020
Science Daily/Florida Atlantic University
About 80 percent of Americans will experience low back pain at some point. Patients are often advised to manage their back pain with exercise and mind-body interventions. But, do they really help? Researchers compared and contrasted yoga, tai chi and qigong, and found them to be effective for treatment of low back pain, reporting positive outcomes such as reduction in pain or psychological distress such as depression and anxiety, reduction in pain-related disability, and improved functional ability.
It's a pain. About 80 percent of adults in the United States will experience lower back pain at some point. Treating back pain typically involves medication, including opioids, surgery, therapy and self-care options. Efforts to reduce opioid use and increase physically based therapies to reduce pain and increase physical function and safety are crucial.
Patients are often advised to use non-pharmacological treatments to manage lower back pain such as exercise and mind-body interventions. But, do they really help? In a review published in the journal Holistic Nursing Practice, researchers from Florida Atlantic University's College for Design and Social Inquiry and Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing evaluated the evidence of effects of three movement-based mind-body interventions on chronic low back pain. They examined yoga, tai chi, which combines gentle physical exercise and stretching with mindfulness, and qigong, a traditional Chinese meditative movement therapy focused on body awareness and attention during slow, relaxed, and fluid repetitive body movements. Little is known about the effects of movement-based mind-body intervention, in particular qigong and tai chi.
Researchers compared and contrasted yoga, tai chi and qigong by examining frequency and duration of these interventions; primary and secondary outcomes; attrition rates and possible adverse events; and results. Findings from their review provide empirical evidence regarding the benefits of yoga, tai chi, and qigong, which have been recommended by health care providers for patients with lower back pain.
"Back pain is a major public health issue often contributing to emotional distress such as depression and anxiety, as well as sleep issues and even social isolation," said Juyoung Park, Ph.D., corresponding author and an associate professor in the Phyllis and Harvey Sandler School of Social Work within FAU's College for Design and Social Inquiry. "We reviewed data to determine the effects of movement-based mind-body interventions on chronic back pain, psychological factors, coping strategies, and quality of life in people suffering with back pain. Our goal was to provide a comprehensive assessment of the effects of these interventions to be able to offer information across disciplines to implement evidence-based interventions to reduce such pain."
Of the 625 peer-reviewed articles the researchers identified, 32 met inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Results found that the majority of these articles showed movement-based mind-body interventions to be effective for treatment of low back pain, reporting positive outcomes such as reduction in pain or psychological distress such as depression and anxiety, reduction in pain-related disability, and improved functional ability. Among the key findings, researchers discovered that longer duration and high-dose yoga intervention showed reductions in back pain while tai chi reduced acute lower back pain in males in their 20s. Tai chi also was more effective than stretching for lower back pain in young males. In the general community, tai chi showed greater reductions in pain intensity, bothersomeness of pain symptoms, and pain-related disability than the control intervention. Because there are only three qigong studies to date, it was unclear to the researchers whether this intervention is useful in treating chronic lower back pain. Existing research suggests positive benefits of yoga, however, tai chi and qigong for lower back pain are still under-investigated.
"Two of the studies we examined in our review were focused on the effects of movement modality, specifically yoga, in veterans. Many military veterans and active duty military personnel experience chronic low back pain and are affected by this pain more than the general population," said Cheryl Krause-Parello, Ph.D., co-author, a professor and director of Canines Providing Assistance to Wounded Warriors (C-P.A.W.W.) within FAU's Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, and a faculty fellow of FAU's Institute for Human Health and Disease Intervention (I-HEALTH). "Our review provides emerging evidence that movement-based mind-body interventions could benefit veterans and others experiencing chronic low back pain."
The review included both randomized and nonrandomized studies with a total of 3,484 subjects ages 33 to 73 years old. Study sample sizes ranged from 25 to 320 subjects. The majority of articles reported on yoga (25), followed by tai chi (four), and qigong (three). Most of the yoga studies were conducted in India, followed by the U.S., while other studies were conducted in Australia (tai chi) and Germany (qigong).
People with chronic low back pain are at increased risk of functional limitations, job-related disability, and potential long-term disability. Moreover, the economic burden of chronic low back pain is high due to the cost of medications such as opioids, procedures, hospitalization, surgical treatment, and absence from work.
"Yoga, tai chi and qigong could be used as effective treatment alternatives to pain medications, surgery, or injection-based treatments such as nerve blocks, which are associated with high incidence of adverse effects in treating lower back pain," said Park. "We need more clinical trials and empirical evidence so that clinicians can prescribe these types of interventions with more confidence for managing lower back pain in their patients."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200206102727.htm
Motivational aspects of mindfulness: Quality differs by situation
January 29, 2020
Science Daily/Virginia Commonwealth University
What makes people more or less mindful from one situation to the next? Researchers have found that mindfulness is not entirely something an individual brings to a situation and rather is partly shaped by the situations they encounter.
"As mindfulness has become prevalent within organizational practice and scholarly research on organizations, there is a growing need to situate mindfulness more fully within organizational contexts," said Christopher S. Reina, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Management and Entrepreneurship in the School of Business.
In "Wherever you go, there you become: How mindfulness arises in everyday situations," published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Reina and co-author Ravi S. Kudesia, Ph.D., assistant professor at the Temple University Fox School of Business, introduce a theoretical framework that explains how mindfulness arises based on an individual's capacity for self-regulation as well as three motivational forces: their metacognitive beliefs, their mental fatigue and how they appraise the situations they experience.
While metacognitive beliefs aid individuals in higher levels of self-regulation, mental fatigue draws resources away from self-regulation. Meanwhile, how individuals appraise a situation influence how much self-regulation is needed to maintain mindfulness.
"These motivational aspects of mindfulness have received little attention to date," Reina said. "Despite the increasing prevalence of mindfulness in organizational research, we have yet to seriously consider its antecedents: how and why people become more or less mindful from one situation to the next." In other words, while researchers have previously explored what mindfulness predicts, little to no research has studied what predicts mindfulness, which represents the core contribution of Reina's study.
The research comprises over 558 participants and 9,390 responses from across three separate studies.
If mindfulness indeed produces positive outcomes, it seems important to identify what situational features can increase or decrease mindfulness. Understanding this can help managers better design organizational situations that enhance mindfulness, Reina said.
"Mindfulness is often assumed to be something that people bring with them into situations, some stable psychological property that is inherent to them," the study concludes. "The present research helps nuance this assumption. If we instead see mindfulness as arising from the coming together of people and their situations, we can better conceptualize mindfulness and design organizational situations that enhance it."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200129125550.htm
Mindfulness makes it easier to forget your fears
January 6, 2020
Science Daily/University of Southern Denmark Faculty of Health Sciences
Mindfulness has previously been shown to help people handle negative emotions and is used as a treatment for anxiety related psychological disorders, but the underlying biological mechanisms are not fully understood. In a new study, researchers show that brief daily mindfulness training delivered through the HEADSPACE mindfulness app makes it easier to achieve lasting extinction of fear reactions.
Mindfulness has been shown to reduce negative emotions in both healthy individuals as well as patients with psychological problems. Studies have also shown that mindfulness is effective for treating clinical emotional problems like anxiety, depression, stress and trauma related disorders. The biological mechanisms that underlie these positive effects on emotional functioning are not sufficiently understood but brain imaging studies have shown that mindfulness training is associated with changes in regions of the brain previously known to be involved in extinction learning, making extinction a likely candidate. However, an actual effect of mindfulness training on extinction learning has never been demonstrated.
In a new study, researchers at University of Southern Denmark, Uppsala University, Lund University, Peking University and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, can now show that mindfulness training facilitates extinction of conditioned fear reactions, producing lasting reductions in threat related arousal responses.
In this study, healthy subjects were randomly assigned to receive either 4 weeks of daily mindfulness training delivered through the Headspace mindfulness app, or were assigned to a wait list control condition. Subsequently, the participants underwent psychological experiments on two consecutive days in which conditioned fear reactions were established on day 1 and then immediately extinguished.
On day 2, the subjects returned and the lasting effects of extinction were evaluated.
Conditioned fear reactions were established by showing the participants neutral images on a computer screen and then some of the images were directly followed by an uncomfortable electric shock to the hand.
After a number of such pairings, the subjects showed elevated autonomic arousal responses just when viewing the pictures, demonstrating that conditioned fear reactions had been learnt.
Fear reactions were measured using skin conductance, an index for how much the subject is sweating, which is a corollary for the fight-or-flight response in humans.
Then, the researchers extinguished these reactions by repeatedly showing the images again but this time omitting the shocks.
In this way, the participants learnt that the images that previously signaled an upcoming uncomfortable shock no longer did so, and consequently subjects showed a substantial decrease in autonomic arousal when viewing the images.
After 24 hours, in order to test the retention of extinction learning, the participants returned to the lab, were hooked up to the shock apparatus and again shown the images they had viewed on the previous day, although no shocks were delivered.
This was the critical test of the study since extinction learning is normally unstable, and fear reactions typically return after a delay even when the subject has gone through successful extinction. In line with the researchers' hypotheses, the group that had been doing mindfulness training now showed lower fear reactions compared to the control group.
The fear reactions in the mindfulness group remained at the same low level they had been by the end of extinction the previous day indicating an improved ability to form and retain extinction memories, whereas the control group showed a substantial increase in fear reactions compared to extinction the previous day.
When comparing the groups reactions during conditioning and extinction on day 1, no differences could be observed, showing that the two groups learned and extinguished the conditioned fear reactions to a similar extent, and the authors conclude that mindfulness appears to have a specific effect on extinction retention.
According to the study's first author Johannes Björkstrand, the findings are interesting for a number of reasons.
"We can show that mindfulness does not only have an effect on subjective experiences of negative emotions, as has been shown previously, but that you can actual see clear effects on autonomic arousal responses, even with a limited amount of training. It is also interesting that the intervention appears to have a specific effect on extinction retention, which is in line with previous brain imaging studies on mindfulness, and also has some implications for how these types of interventions could be used to treat anxiety related problems in a clinical context.
"Anxiety and trauma related disorders are often treated using exposure therapy, a psychological treatment that is based on extinction learning, but not everyone responds to these treatments. One possible explanation is that individuals with these disorders have been shown to have difficulties in forming lasting extinction memories when compared to healthy individuals, which could represent an underlying vulnerability that increases the risk of developing these types of problems to begin with and constitutes an impediment to successful treatment.
"Our results suggest, that if you combine mindfulness training with exposure therapy, maybe you can achieve larger and longer lasting treatment effects. In this way you could get at an underlying vulnerability factor and more people would respond to these treatments, but studies in clinical populations and actual treatment studies are needed before we can draw any firm conclusions in this matter," says Johannes Björkstrand.
The researchers now want to move forward and investigate the underlying neurobiological mechanisms that are involved.
"We are currently repeating the experiment with twice the number of participants, and the whole thing is carried out inside an fMRI-scanner equipped with an extra strong electromagnetic field so that we can measure their brain activity to a high degree of precision throughout all parts of the experiment. We hope to show that the effect is robust and that we can replicate the current findings, and also say what processes in the brain are involved in producing these effects. We just finished data-collection but we still have a rather large amount of analysis work to do before we arrive at any results," says senior author, associate professor Ulrich Kirk.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200106123431.htm
Chair yoga more effective than music therapy in older adults with advanced dementia
Pilot study first to show adults with advanced dementia can participate in non-pharmacological interventions
October 2, 2019
Science Daily/Florida Atlantic University
Researchers assessed the ability of older adults with advanced dementia to participate in non-pharmacological interventions and compared chair yoga with chair-based exercise and music therapy. Results showed that participants with moderate-to-severe dementia could safely adhere to non-pharmacological interventions; more than 97 percent fully engaged in each session. The chair yoga group reported a higher quality of life score, including physical condition, mood, functional abilities, interpersonal relationships, and ability to participate in meaningful activities.
As dementia progresses, the ability to participate in exercise programs declines. Sticking to a program also becomes challenging because of impaired cognition, mobility issues or risk of falls and fractures -- some exercise regimens are just too complicated or physically demanding. Although studies have shown the benefits of physical activity on dementia, few have included participants with moderate-to-severe dementia or examined the effects of gentle types of exercise on this population.
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University conducted a pilot study that is the first cluster, randomized controlled trial to examine the effects of chair yoga on older adults with moderate to severe dementia who are unable to participate in regular exercise or standing yoga due to cognitive impairment, problems with balance, or fear of falling. The key aim of the study was to assess the likelihood of these individuals' ability to participate in non-pharmacological interventions as well as demonstrate the safety and effects of chair yoga on older adults with all levels of dementia.
For the study, published in the American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease & Other Dementias, researchers compared chair yoga with two other types of non-pharmacological interventions: chair-based exercise and music intervention. Participants in each of the three groups attended 45-minute sessions twice a week for 12 weeks. Researchers collected data at baseline, after six weeks and after completing the 12-week intervention.
Results showed that participants with moderate-to-severe dementia could safely adhere to non-pharmacological interventions. More than 97 percent of the participants fully engaged in each session. Study findings showed that the chair yoga group improved significantly in quality of life compared to the music intervention group. Both the chair yoga and chair-exercise groups showed improvement over time, while the music intervention group declined. In addition, both the chair yoga and chair-based exercise groups showed lower depression across all three time points when compared to the music intervention group.
Researchers examined the effects of chair yoga on physical function, including balance and mobility, and compared the effects with chair-based exercise and music intervention. They also looked at the effects of chair yoga on reducing psychological symptoms like anxiety and depression, behavioral symptoms like agitation or aggression, and improved quality of life. They also explored the effects of chair yoga on sleep problems.
Chair yoga provides a safe environment for stretching, strengthening and flexibility while decreasing the risk of falls by using a chair. It also provides important breathing and relaxation techniques utilizing stationary poses that use isometric contraction and guided relaxation of various muscle groups.
"We think that the physical poses we used in the chair yoga and chair-based exercise groups were an important factor in improving quality of life for the participants in our study," said Juyoung Park, Ph.D., lead author and an associate professor in the Phyllis and Harvey Sandler School of Social Work within FAU's College for Design and Social Inquiry. "It is fascinating that, although some participants showed mild levels of agitation or wandering in the intervention room prior to the yoga session, they became calm and attentive when the yoga interventionist started demonstrating yoga poses. Although they did not understand the interventionist's verbal instructions due to their cognitive impairment associated with advanced dementia, they followed the instructor's poses."
Park and collaborators did not find any differences in the three intervention groups on physical function, with the exception of handgrip strength, which was higher in the chair yoga group compared to the music intervention group. None of the three groups declined significantly in any of the investigated physical functional measures.
Researchers also did not find any significant between-group differences in anxiety at any time point. There were no significant between-group differences in change in depression and anxiety. The researchers also did not find significant differences among the three intervention groups for sleep quality at any of the three time points.
"We did see an increase in agitation in the chair yoga group even though this group reported a higher quality of life score, including physical condition, mood, functional abilities, interpersonal relationships, ability to participate in meaningful activities, and final situations," said Park. "It's important to note that quality of life is a more comprehensive approach to biopsychosocial and behavioral function than a mere measure of agitation. Meditation and the mind-body connection component of the chair yoga program may have increased quality of life for participants in this study. This finding is consistent with our earlier studies that showed a targeted approach was successful in increasing quality of life in patients with dementia."
Study participants were 60 years or older (mean average age was 84 years-old) and diagnosed with dementia including Alzheimer's disease (the largest diagnostic group), Lewy Body dementia and Parkinson disease dementia. There were no significant demographic differences among intervention groups. More than half of the group (67.7 percent) were taking medication(s) to manage symptoms associated with dementia.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191002102800.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
Experts review evidence yoga is good for the brain
December 12, 2019
Science Daily/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau
Scientists have known for decades that aerobic exercise strengthens the brain and contributes to the growth of new neurons, but few studies have examined how yoga affects the brain. A review of the science finds evidence that yoga enhances many of the same brain structures and functions that benefit from aerobic exercise.
The review, published in the journal Brain Plasticity, focused on 11 studies of the relationship between yoga practice and brain health. Five of the studies engaged individuals with no background in yoga practice in one or more yoga sessions per week over a period of 10-24 weeks, comparing brain health at the beginning and end of the intervention. The other studies measured brain differences between individuals who regularly practice yoga and those who don't.
Each of the studies used brain-imaging techniques such as MRI, functional MRI or single-photon emission computerized tomography. All involved Hatha yoga, which includes body movements, meditation and breathing exercises.
"From these 11 studies, we identified some brain regions that consistently come up, and they are surprisingly not very different from what we see with exercise research," said University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Neha Gothe, who led the research with Wayne State University psychology professor Jessica Damoiseaux.
"For example, we see increases in the volume of the hippocampus with yoga practice," Gothe said. Many studies looking at the brain effects of aerobic exercise have shown a similar increase in hippocampus size over time, she said.
The hippocampus is involved in memory processing and is known to shrink with age, Gothe said. "It is also the structure that is first affected in dementia and Alzheimer's disease."
Though many of the studies are exploratory and not conclusive, the research points to other important brain changes associated with regular yoga practice, Damoiseaux said. The amygdala, a brain structure that contributes to emotional regulation, tends to be larger in yoga practitioners than in their peers who do not practice yoga. The prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex and brain networks such as the default mode network also tend to be larger or more efficient in those who regularly practice yoga.
"The prefrontal cortex, a brain region just behind the forehead, is essential to planning, decision-making, multitasking, thinking about your options and picking the right option," Damoiseaux said. "The default mode network is a set of brain regions involved in thinking about the self, planning and memory."
Like the amygdala, the cingulate cortex is part of the limbic system, a circuit of structures that plays a key role in emotional regulation, learning and memory, she said.
The studies also find that the brain changes seen in individuals practicing yoga are associated with better performance on cognitive tests or measures of emotional regulation.
The discovery that yoga may have similar effects on the brain to aerobic exercise is intriguing and warrants more study, Gothe said.
"Yoga is not aerobic in nature, so there must be other mechanisms leading to these brain changes," she said. "So far, we don't have the evidence to identify what those mechanisms are."
She suspects that enhancing emotional regulation is a key to yoga's positive effects on the brain. Studies link stress in humans and animals to shrinkage of the hippocampus and poorer performance on tests of memory, for example, she said.
"In one of my previous studies, we were looking at how yoga changes the cortisol stress response," Gothe said. "We found that those who had done yoga for eight weeks had an attenuated cortisol response to stress that was associated with better performance on tests of decision-making, task-switching and attention."
Yoga helps people with or without anxiety disorders manage their stress, Gothe said.
"The practice of yoga helps improve emotional regulation to reduce stress, anxiety and depression," she said. "And that seems to improve brain functioning."
The researchers say there is a need for more -- and more rigorous -- research into yoga's effects on the brain. They recommend large intervention studies that engage participants in yoga for months, match yoga groups with active control groups, and measure changes in the brain and performance on cognitive tests using standard approaches that allow for easy comparisons with other types of exercise.
"The science is pointing to yoga being beneficial for healthy brain function, but we need more rigorous and well-controlled intervention studies to confirm these initial findings," Damoiseaux said.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191212105851.htm
Yoga and physical therapy as treatment for chronic lower back pain also improves sleep
November 19, 2019
Science Daily/Boston Medical Center
Yoga and physical therapy (PT) are effective approaches to treating co-occurring sleep disturbance and back pain while reducing the need for medication, according to a new study from Boston Medical Center (BMC). Published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the research showed significant improvements in sleep quality lasting 52 weeks after 12 weeks of yoga classes or 1-on-1 PT, which suggests a long-term benefit of these non-pharmacologic approaches. In addition, participants with early improvements in pain after 6 weeks of treatment were three and a half times more likely to have improvements in sleep after the full, 12-week treatment, highlighting that pain and sleep are closely related.
Sleep disturbance and insomnia are common among people with chronic low back pain (cLBP). Previous research showed that 59% of people with cLBP experience poor sleep quality and 53% are diagnosed with insomnia disorder. Medication for both sleep and back pain can have serious side effects, and risk of opioid-related overdose and death increases with use of sleep medications.
"Identifying holistic ways to treat these conditions could help decrease the reliance on these medications as well as keep patients safer and more comfortable," said Eric Roseen, DC, MSc, a researcher in the department of family medicine at BMC, who led the study.
The randomized controlled trial included 320 adults with cLBP from BMC and seven surrounding community health centers. At the beginning of the study, over 90 percent of participants with cLBP were found to suffer from poor sleep. Participants were assigned one of three different therapies for cLBP: physical therapy, weekly yoga, or reading educational materials. Previous research from BMC discovered that yoga and PT are similarly effective for lowering pain and improving physical function, reducing the need for pain medication. In this study, results for sleep improvements were compared over a 12-week intervention period and after 1 year of follow-up.
"The high prevalence of sleep problems in adults with chronic low back pain can have detrimental effects on a person's overall health and well-being," said Roseen, also an assistant professor of family medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. "This really emphasizes the need for providers to ask patients with chronic low back pain about the quality of their sleep. Given the serious risks of combining pain and sleep medications, nonpharmacologic approaches should be considered for these patients."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191119105556.htm