meditation

Meditation shown to reduce pain during breast cancer biopsy

Meditation is a practice of the mind and body that has long been used to generate calmness and physical relaxation. Now, a new study suggests that women who are having breast cancer biopsies should use meditation, as it reduces anxiety, fatigue and pain.

The researchers, from the Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, NC, publish their findings in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

Undergoing a breast biopsy is not pleasant, to say the least. It involves removing breast tissue to examine it for signs of breast cancers, and women undergoing this procedure often experience pain during and afterward.

“Patients who experience pain and anxiety may move during the procedure, which can reduce the effectiveness of biopsy, or they may not adhere to follow-up screening and testing,” says Dr. Mary Scott Soo, lead author from Duke.

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), previous studies have shown that meditation can reduce blood pressure and even reduce symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Medical News Today recently reported on a study that suggested mindfulness meditation can bring greater pain relief than a placebo.

And other research suggests meditation may physically change the brain and body, improving many health problems and promoting healthy lifestyles.

Meditation ‘a good alternative to drugs in these settings’
To conduct their study, Dr. Soo and colleagues randomized 121 women who needed breast biopsies into three groups: guided meditation, music and a standard-care control group.

During the biopsy, the women in the meditation group listened to an “audio-recorded, guided, loving-kindness meditation,” which focused on acquiring positive emotions and releasing negative ones.

Meanwhile, the women in the music group listened to relaxing music, which was a choice of instrumental jazz, classical piano, harp and flute, nature sounds or world music. The control group received supportive words from the biopsy team.

Both before and after the biopsy, the patients filled out questionnaires that measured their nervousness and anxiety, ranked their biopsy pain from zero to 10 and gauged their feelings of weakness and fatigue.

Results showed that the women in the meditation and music groups reported much greater post-biopsy reductions in anxiety and fatigue, compared with the control group, which reported increased fatigue.

Furthermore, the women in the meditation group experienced significantly lower pain during the biopsy, compared with the women in the music group.

“Image-guided needle biopsies for diagnosing breast cancer are very efficient and successful,” says Dr. Soo. “but the anxiety and potential pain can have a negative impact on patient care.”

Source: medical news today

Yoga and meditation in early life cut health care cost

Strengthening your resilience with mindful meditation or yoga can help keep the doctors away, thereby reducing your health care cost, says a new study.

Resilience can be enhanced with practice, starting with the relaxation response — a physiologic state of deep rest induced by practices such as rhythmic breathing, mindfulness meditation, yoga, tai chi or prayer, the study said.

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The researchers found that people who graduated from a resiliency-boosting programme used considerably less health care services in the year following the course compared with the year before.

“We have shown in the past that it works in the laboratory and on the level of individual physiology, and now we can see that when you make people well, they do not want to use health care so much,” said study leader James Stahl from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Centre in New Hampshire, US.

For the study, the researchers tested the efficacy of eight-week course developed by the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

To measure the effect of this programme called Relaxation Response Resiliency Programme (3RP) on health care utilisation, the study compared health care used by more than 4,400 3RP graduates to that of 13,150 patients who did not take the 3RP course.

In the year after training, use of health care services by the resiliency programme graduates dropped by 43 percent.

The researchers noted that it is possible to build resilience without any formal training.

Resilience comes in part from making meaningful connections with other people, such as through volunteer work, care-taking for aging relatives, and other service work.

In addition, positive psychology research shows that having an optimistic outlook and a sense of connectedness, meaning, and purpose in your life contributes to resilience.

This includes learning how to identify and challenge day-to-day negative attitudes that can undermine health.

“Just like fluorinating your water or vaccinating yourself, these are ways of keeping you healthy with, from a public health perspective, minimal investment,” Stahl said.

The study was published in the journal PLOS One.

Source Zee News

Yoga, meditation give brain power a boost: study

Yoga and meditation are known for their calming powers, but new research shows these practices could also sharpen your computer skills.

In a study published online in the scientific journal TECHNOLOGY, University of Minnesota researchers studied the learning patterns of two groups: 12 people who practiced yoga or meditation for one year at least two times a week for an hour, and 24 healthy people with little or no yoga or meditation experience.

Yoga, meditation give brain power a boost

Researchers studied the participants’ brain activity as they used left and right hand movements to move a cursor across a computer screen. They found that those who did yoga and meditation learned three times faster than those who had little or no experience with the practices. They were also twice as likely to finish the task after 30 trials compared to the group with little or no experience.

“This comprehensive study shows for the first time that looking closer at the brain side may provide a valuable tool for reducing obstacles for brain-computer interface success in early stages,” lead researcher Bin He, a biomedical engineering professor, said in a news release.

Researchers say the findings could help doctors assist physically disabled and paralyzed individuals, who must rely on their mental muscle to operate devices like wheelchairs and artificial limbs.

“Our ultimate goal is to help people who are paralyzed or have brain diseases regain mobility and independence,” He said. “We need to look at all possibilities to improve the number of people who could benefit from our research.”

Source: fox news

Yoga can help cope with post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms

A new study has revealed that symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be reduced with help of “yogic breathing.”

Yoga can help cope with post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have shown that a breathing-based meditation practice called Sudarshan Kriya Yoga can be an effective treatment for PTSD, which causes intrusive memories, heightened anxiety, and personality changes.

The hallmark of PTSD is hyperarousal, which can be defined as overreacting to innocuous stimuli, and is one aspect of the autonomic nervous system, the system that controls the beating of the heart and other body functions. It governs one’s ability to respond to his or her environment.

Sudarshan Kriya Yoga is a practice of controlled breathing that directly affects the autonomic nervous system. The team was interested in the practice because of its focus on manipulating the breath, and how that in turn may have consequences for the autonomic nervous system and specifically, hyperarousal.

The tests included measuring eye-blink startle magnitude and respiration rates in response to stimuli such as a noise burst in the laboratory. Respiration is one of the functions controlled by the autonomic nervous system; the eye-blink startle rate is an involuntary response that can be used to measure one component of hyperarousal. These two measurements reflect aspects of mental health because they affect how an individual regulates emotion.

The CIHM study included 21 soldiers: an active group of 11 and a control group of 10. Those who received the one-week training in yogic breathing showed lower anxiety, reduced respiration rates and fewer PTSD symptoms.

Sudarshan Kriya Yoga has already been shown to increase optimism in college students, and reduce stress and anxiety in people suffering from depression, and hence it may be an effective way to decrease suffering and, quite possibly, the incidence of suicide among veterans.

Source: zee news

15 Natural Back Pain Remedies

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Scientifically proven ways to find back pain relief, no medication required.

No-pill ways to treat back pain
by Christine MattheisAchy back? You’re not alone: back problems send more Americans to the doctor annually than nearly any other medical problem, according to a 2013 Mayo Clinic study. Whether you’re recovering from misjudging a heavy load (we’ve all been there), dealing with a lingering injury, or have a chronic problem, you don’t necessarily need to resort to popping tons of pain relievers. Talk to your doc about these 15 expert-approved natural back pain remedies, and find out if they are safe and appropriate for you.

Yoga
Just say om. In a British study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, low-back pain sufferers who took one yoga class a week for three months saw greater improvements in function compared to those receiving conventional care like medicine or physical therapy.

Stretching
The same study found that stretching is just as effective as yoga in treating back pain. The 52-minute stretching classes consisted of 15 exercises that stretched all major muscle groups, but emphasized the trunk and legs.

Massage
Two words: Treat yourself. Chronic low back pain sufferers who got weekly massages reported less pain after 10 weeks than those who didn’t, according to another Annals of Internal Medicine study.

Acupuncture
If the idea of having needles inserted into your skin gives you the heebie-jeebies, try to have an open mind—it may be the key to relieving your chronic back pain. In a study, people who received acupuncture treatments were more likely to find back pain relief than those receiving conventional care.

Talk therapy
Talking about your back pain with a therapist may bring some relief. In a UK study, back pain sufferers who had 90 minutes of group cognitive behavioral therapy a week for six weeks reported less pain during the treatment. (Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on solving problems by changing thoughts and behavior.) A year later, 59% said their pain was totally cured, compared to just 31% in the group that did not go through therapy.

Strength training
Celebrity fitness trainer Kathy Kaehler has a test for you: “Stand with your back to a wall, shoulder blades pressed against it. Can you hold the position for the length of the song ‘Happy Birthday’? If not, you’ll need to strengthen your back and core.” Building strength in those areas can help prevent and relieve back pain. Try these four moves.

Physical therapy
Good things come to those who wait—except perhaps when it comes to back pain treatment. Starting physical therapy within two weeks of back pain onset was associated with less risk of need for subsequent medical care as well as lower overall health costs, according to a study published in the journal Spine

Osteopathic manual therapy
In osteopathic manual therapy (OMT), an osteopath or chiropractor moves your back muscles using hands-on techniques such as stretching, light pressure, and resistance. One study found that people who underwent OMT for 12 weeks saw a 30% reduction in their pain level

Stress reduction
Learning to keep your cool is as good for your back as it is for your mental health. When you’re anxious, your body sets off the “fight or flight” response, which involves tensing your muscles so you’re ready to spring into action. One European study revealed that people prone to negative thoughts and anxiety are more likely to suffer from back pain. Get calm now with these stress-busting solutions.

Meditation
Meditation has been proven to reduce chronic pain in several scientific studies. Research from Duke University found that people suffering from chronic back pain saw significant reductions in pain and psychological distress after practicing a form of meditation that focuses on releasing anger. In another study, meditators experienced a 40% reduction in pain intensity.

Comfrey root
People who used an ointment that contains this plant-based extract for 5 days reduced the intensity of lower back pain by 95%, according to a 2009 study conducted by Merck (which manufactures the ointment). In comparison, a placebo group had a 38% reduction in pain during that same time, according to the study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Look for comfrey root ointment in health food stores or online. Just don’t use it for more than 10 days at a time—it can be toxic.

Aquatic therapy
Aquatic therapy is essentially physical therapy in a pool. Instead of using weights for resistance, patients use the resistance of the water. Studies show it may help alleviate lower back pain. In one 2013 study, sedentary adults who underwent aquatic therapy five times a week for two months saw reductions in pain and increases in quality of life. One smaller study found that aquatic therapy also helped pregnant women who were experiencing aching lower backs.

Tai Chi
This slow-moving form of Chinese martial arts may be an effective back pain treatment. In a 2011 American College of Rheumatology study, people who completed two 40-minute Tai Chi sessions a week for 10 weeks reduced pain intensity 1.3 points on a zero to 10 scale.

The Alexander technique
A form of physical therapy, practitioners of the Alexander technique teach patients how to adjust their posture during everyday activities to reduce muscular tension and stress. In a BMJ study, people who took lessons in the Alexander technique saw long-term improvement in pain and quality of life.

Pilates
It may be tempting to quit exercising when you’re suffering from back pain, but it’s essential to keep yourself moving. Pilates is one great option. In a 2014 European Journal of Physical Rehabilitation Medicine study, researchers found an improvement in pain, disability, and psychological health in chronic low-back pain patients who took five hourlong Pilates classes a week for six months. Meanwhile, people who remained inactive experienced further worsening of their pain. Similarly, a Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise study revealed that taking either Pilates or a general exercise class twice a week for six weeks both improved pain and quality of life.

Source: Health

Spring Cleaning: 6 Ways To Detox Your Mind And Body

While it might not feel like spring as yet in some parts of the country, the season of warmer weather and chirping birds is finally here. So what can you do to prepare for the impending months of warm weather? Well, besides spring cleaning, doing a mind and body detox is always helpful, especially at the start of a new season.

It’s especially important to clear your mind if you’re a person who is constantly on the go. “Outside a good night’s sleep, we don’t get many breaks from this mind chatter,” Dr. Robert Puff, a licensed clinical psychologist. “Even if we’re not thinking, we’re surrounded by external stimuli such as television, music, and conversations around us.” This prevents us from relaxing, and most of the time we end up feeling stressed and overworked. Here are a few helpful tips to get your body and mind detox started:

Mind:
1. Emphasize Positive Emotions: By emphasizing thing such as love, trust, compassion, forgiveness, and joy, you’re essentially increasing the importance of these emotions in your life. By doing so, you are affirming the good things in your life and focusing on the positive. This leaves little to no room for negative thoughts. However, there is no clear-cut scientific answer as to happy thoughts equaling a cure for any type of disease or ailment. But there’s evidence that mood can predict whether someone who has had one heart attack will have another

2. Morning Meditation: Taking 20 minutes in the morning to just focus on yourself is a good way to calm your mind and collect your thoughts before you start your sometimes hectic day. “Mind strength is one of the most empowering tools we can employ to impact and improve all aspects of life,” according to psychotherapist Dr. Ron Alexander.

3. Start Working On Your Goals: By taking control and getting hard at work on your goals, you’ll begin to feel more accomplished. Even small tasks can have great rewards because they eliminate overthinking.

Body:
1. Eliminate Alcohol: By eliminating alcohol, you’re essentially ridding your body of one form of toxin. And a 2013 study also noted that those who didn’t drink alcohol lived longer.

2. Eat Plenty of Fiber: Eating fiber is a key component in mainlining healthy bowels and ridding the body of physical toxins.

3. Dry Brushing: This entails using a bristle brush in a circular motion all over your body. This helps to eliminate the dead skin cells, decrease the look of cellulite due to an increased blood flow, and improve skin tone.

Source: medical daily

Harvard yoga scientists find proof of meditation benefit

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Scientists are getting close to proving that yoga and meditation can ward off stress and disease. Scientists are getting close to proving what yogis have held to be true for centuries—yoga and meditation can ward off stress and disease.

John Denninger, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, is leading a five-year study on how the ancient practices affect genes and brain activity in the chronically stressed. His latest work follows a study he and others published earlier this year showing how so-called mind-body techniques can switch on and off some genes linked to stress and immune function.

While hundreds of studies have been conducted on the mental health benefits of yoga and meditation, they have tended to rely on blunt tools like participant questionnaires, as well as heart rate and blood pressure monitoring. Only recently have neuro-imaging and genomics technology used in Denninger’s latest studies allowed scientists to measure physiological changes in greater detail.
“There is a true biological effect,” said Denninger, director of research at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, one of Harvard Medical School’s teaching hospitals. “The kinds of things that happen when you meditate do have effects throughout the body, not just in the brain.”

The government-funded study may persuade more doctors to try an alternative route for tackling the source of a myriad of modern ailments. Stress-induced conditions can include everything from hypertension and infertility to depression and even the aging process. They account for 60-90% of doctor’s visits in the US, according to the Benson-Henry Institute. The World Health
Organization estimates stress costs US companies at least $300 billion a year through absenteeism, turn-over and low productivity.

Seinfeld, Murdoch

The science is advancing alongside a budding mindfulness movement, which includes meditation devotees such as Bill George, board member of Goldman Sachs Group and Exxon Mobil Corp., and comedian Jerry Seinfeld. News Corp.  chairman Rupert Murdoch recently revealed on Twitter that he is giving meditation a try.

As a psychiatrist specializing in depression, Denninger said he was attracted to mind-body medicine, pioneered in the late 1960s by Harvard professor Herbert Benson, as a possible way to prevent the onset of depression through stress reduction. While treatment with pharmaceuticals is still essential, he sees yoga and meditation as useful additions to his medical arsenal.

Exchange programme

It’s an interest that dates back to an exchange programme he attended in China the summer before entering Harvard as an undergraduate student. At Hangzhou University, he trained with a tai chi master every morning for three weeks. “By the end of my time there, I had gotten through my thick teenage skull that there was something very important about the breath and about inhabiting the present moment, he said. I’ve carried that with me since then.” His current study, to conclude in 2015 with about $3.3 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, tracks 210 healthy subjects with high levels of reported chronic stress for six months. They are divided in three groups.

One group with 70 participants perform a form of yoga known as Kundalini, another 70 meditate and the rest listen to stress education audiobooks, all for 20 minutes a day at home. Kundalini is a form of yoga that incorporates meditation, breathing exercises and the singing of mantras in addition to postures. Denninger said it was chosen for the study because of its strong
meditation component.

Participants come into the lab for weekly instruction for two months, followed by three sessions where they answer questionnaires, give blood samples used for genomic analysis and undergo neuro-imaging tests.

‘Immortality enzyme’
Unlike earlier studies, this one is the first to focus on participants with high levels of stress. The study published in May in the medical journal PloS One showed that one session of relaxation-response practice was enough to enhance the expression of genes involved in energy metabolism and insulin secretion and reduce expression of genes linked to inflammatory response and
stress. There was an effect even among novices who had never practiced before. Harvard isn’t the only place where scientists have started examining the biology behind yoga.

In a study published last year, scientists at the University of California at Los Angeles and Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn found that 12 minutes of daily yoga meditation for eight weeks increased telomerase activity by 43%, suggesting an improvement in stress-induced aging. Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, shared the Nobel medicine prize in 2009 with
Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for research on the telomerase immortality enzyme, which slows the cellular aging process.

Build resilience

Not all patients will be able to stick to a daily regimen of exercise and relaxation. Nor should they have to, according to Denninger and others. Simply knowing breath-management techniques and having a better understanding of stress can help build resilience.

“A certain amount of stress can be helpful,” said Sophia Dunn, a clinical psychotherapist who trained at King’s College London. “Yoga and meditation are tools for enabling us to swim in difficult waters.”

Source: Live Mint

Meditation can reduce stress disorder in ten days

The researchers tested 11 participants after 10-days and 30-days TM practice. After just 10-days, PTSD symptoms dropped almost 30 per cent.

For people suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), here comes a good news: Transcendental Meditation ™ technique can significantly reduce the stress disorder in flat 10 days.

In experiments on Congolese war refugees living in Ugandan camps, researchers found these fascinating results.

“An earlier study found a similar result after 30 days where 90 per cent of TM participants dropped to a non-symptomatic level. But we were surprised to see such a significant reduction with this group after just 10 days,” said lead author Colonel Brian Rees from US Army Reserve Medical Corps.

The researchers tested 11 participants after 10-days and 30-days TM practice. After just 10-days, PTSD symptoms dropped almost 30 per cent.

“What makes this study interesting is when we tested them in the 90 days before they began the TM technique, their PTSD scores kept going up,” said co-author Fred Travis, director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management situated in Iowa, US.

“The Transcendental Meditation technique is increasingly being seen as a viable treatment by the US military,” added Rees.

According to the researchers, during this particular meditation technique, one experiences a deep state of restful alertness.

Repeated experience of this state for 20 minutes twice a day cultures the nervous system to maintain settled mental and physical functioning the rest of the day.

This helps minimise disturbing thoughts, sleep difficulties and other adverse PTSD symptoms, said the study published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress.

Source; khaleej times

Meditation’s Effects Similar to Pills for Anxiety, Depression, and Pain

In a review of randomized clinical trials, Johns Hopkins researchers find that meditation is effective for combatting common mental health woes.

Meditation has been used for centuries, but its benefits have been primarily anecdotal, whether it’s a Tibetan monk blocking out pain to walk across hot coals or a college student meditating to cope with the loss of a loved one.

Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have applied scientific analysis to the practice and found that mindfulness meditation programs, which promote heightened awareness, can help with common mental health problems.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, found measurable evidence of improvement in anxiety, depression, pain, and stress after eight weeks of treatment.

“For example, the effect size for the effect on depression was 0.3, which is what would be expected with the use of an anti-depressant,” the researchers said.

To come to these conclusions, researchers evaluated existing studies on meditation and rated them based on scientific standards of bias risk, precision, directness, and consistency. In the end, they analyzed 47 randomized clinical trials with a total of 3,515 participants.

Dr. Kevin Barrows, director of mindfulness programs at the University of California, San Francisco’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, said the study’s findings were “not surprising, but affirming.” He said that meditation often receives unfair criticism because studies on its effectiveness do not always meet the rigorous scientific standard of research.

“This a refutation of that,” Barrows, who was not involved in the JAMA study, told Healthline. “This is a scientifically rigorous study. It does corroborate the efficacy of mindfulness.”

What Is Mindfulness Meditation?
Mindfulness meditation, or vipassana, involves periods of time spent becoming more aware of one’s body and surroundings. It can be as simple as counting your breaths with your eyes closed, but to get the full benefits, it takes practice.

The goal of this kind of meditation is to simply be aware of the full circumstances of being alive.

In the book Mindfulness in Plain English, the Ven. Henepola Gunaratana, a Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka, writes that the goal of meditation is not to change the world around us, but to control our reaction to it.

“Vipassana is a form of mental training that will teach you to experience the world in an entirely new way. You will learn for the first time what is truly happening to you, around you, and within you,” Gunaratana wrote. “It is a process of self-discovery, a participatory investigation in which you observe your own experiences while participating in them, and as they occur.”

Mindfulness meditation has been used as a complimentary therapy for mental problems for generations, but the new empirical evidence may help the practice become more widely accepted in the mainstream health field.

Source: cbs news

 

How meditation helps overcome addictions

Rehabilitation therapies that use meditation are likely to have a higher success rate when it comes to helping trying to overcome addiction. This is the conclusion of a new survey of animal and human studies by a computer scientist who used a computational model of addiction, a literature review and an in silico experiment. The findings of the survey — by computer scientist Yariv Levyof the University of Massachusetts Amherst, neuroscience researcher Jerrold Meyer, and computer scientist Andrew Barto — has been published in the latest issue of the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry. “Our higher-level conclusion is that a treatment based on meditation-like techniques can be helpful as a supplement to help someone get out of addiction. We give scientific and mathematical arguments for this,” said Levy, who was a doctoral student when he undertook the survey.

According to Levy, the survey aimed to use learnings from existing animal and human studies to better understand addiction and seek new approaches to treatment. The researchers explored the allostatic theory, which describes changes in the brain’s reward and anti-reward systems and reward set points as substance misuse progresses. They used two existing computational models, one pharmacological and a more behavioural-cognitive model for the study. The allostatic theory says that when someone takes a drug he or she stresses the reward system and it loses its equilibrium state. “We smoke one cigarette and go out, come back in again, and out with another cigarette, always trying to return to equilibrium,” Levy says. “The reward system tries to change its structure with neural adaptations to get back to equilibrium. But if I continue to smoke, even with such adaptations, I can’t make it back. Equilibrium is broken as long as I continue to smoke.”

As the reward system is stressed, the anti-reward system steps in and says, “I’ll try to help,” and the person enters what is known as an allostatic state. Other brain structures are affected by the addictive substance, impairing the addict’s evaluation of drug use compared to other reinforcers, Levy said. To bind the two theories and test how they could work together in silico, the authors follow three virtual case studies, each representing a different trajectory of allostatic state during escalation of cigarette smoking. “This investigation provides formal arguments encouraging current rehabilitation therapies to include meditation-like practices along with pharmaceutical drugs and behavioural counseling,” the authors wrote.

Source: Oman daily Observer