Iraq and Afghanistan veterans show vast improvement in PTSD symptoms using Transcendental Meditation

Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who suffered from post traumatic stress disorder, brought about by moderate to heavy moderate combat, experienced up to 50 percent reduction of their symptoms after just eight weeks of participating in a transcendental meditation program.

The five soldiers in the study, aged 25 to 40 years, experienced marked relief from stress and depression, and saw improvement in their relationships and quality of life.

“Even though the number of veterans in this study was small, the results were very impressive,” said Norman Rosenthal, MD, clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School and the study’s senior researcher. “These young men were in extreme distress as a direct result of trauma suffered during combat, and the simple and effortless Transcendental Meditation technique literally transformed their lives.”

Rosenthal hypothesizes that Transcendental Meditation helps people with PTSD because regular practice produces long-term changes in sympathetic nervous system activity, as evidenced by decreased blood pressure, and lower reactivity to stress. “Transcendental Meditation quiets down the nervous system, and slows down the ‘fight-or-flight’ response,” he said. People with PTSD show overactive fight-or-flight responses, making them excellent candidates for Transcendental Meditation.

Rosenthal points out that there is an urgent need to find effective and cost-effective treatments for veterans with combat-related PTSD. “The condition is common, affecting an estimated one in seven deployed soldiers and Marines, most of whom do not get adequate treatment. So far, only one treatment—simulation exposure to battleground scenes—has been deemed effective, but it requires specialized software and hardware, trained personnel and is labor intensive.”

The details of the pilot study were published in the June 2011 issue of Military Medicine (Volume 176, Number 6).

Medical providers referring patients to mind-body therapies

Approximately one-third of Americans use mind-body therapies, such as yoga, meditation, and tai chi, to complement their healthcare. Now, a recent survey by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School shows that 1 in 30 Americans are referred to those therapies by their medical provider.

“There’s good evidence to support using mind-body therapies clinically,” said lead author Aditi Nerurkar, MD, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Harvard Medical School and BIDMC. “Still, we didn’t expect to see provider referral rates that were quite so high.”

The study shows that attitudes about healing are changing and that the use of complementary medicine is on the rise. This is especially true for patients who are sicker and are seeking alternatives to their failed traditional treatments.

“What we learned suggests that providers are referring their patients for mind-body therapies as a last resort once conventional therapeutic options have failed. It makes us wonder whether referring patients for these therapies earlier in the treatment process could lead to less use of the health care system, and possibly, better outcomes for these patients,” said Nerurkar.

Meditation is an antidote for an over-stimulating world

Mindfulness meditation not only helps improve cognitive functions such as memory, it helps regulate the flow of sensory information from our external world.

Catherine Kerr, PhD, of the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Osher Research Center at Harvard Medical School, co-lead author of a recent report on mindfulness meditation, says: “Our discovery that mindfulness meditators more quickly adjusted the brain wave that screens out distraction could explain their superior ability to rapidly remember and incorporate new facts.”

The key is how regular meditation practice eventually adjusts and regulates the brain’s alpha rhythms, a crucial brain wave that is thought to “turn down the volume” on distracting information. The alpha rhythm is particularly active in brain cells that process touch, sight and sound in the brain’s outmost layer, called the cortex, where it helps to suppress irrelevant or distracting sensations and regulate the flow of sensory information between brain regions.

“This result may explain reports that mindfulness meditation decreases pain perception,” says Kerr. “Enhanced ability to turn the alpha rhythm up or down could give practitioners’ greater ability to regulate pain sensation.”

Meditation’s dramatic pain-relieving effects documented

A recent study that measured meditation’s influence on pain demonstrated that only a little over an hour of training provided dramatic pain-relieving effects.

Using a type of mindfulness meditation known as focused attention, non-meditators who were trained to use the technique experienced a 40 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness. Other pain-relieving drugs, such as morphine, tend to alleviate the pain intensity by about 25 percent, according to Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., lead author of the study and post-doctoral research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

Before and after meditation training, brain scans were performed using arterial spin labeling magnetic resonance imaging (ASL MRI), which more effectively captures brain activity specific to meditation. During the scans, a pain-inducing heat device was applied to the participants’ legs. Comparisons of the two sets of scans demonstrated the difference in the level of activity in the pain-processing region.

Zeidan and colleagues believe that meditation has great potential for clinical use because so little training was required to produce such dramatic pain-relieving effects. “This study shows that meditation produces real effects in the brain and can provide an effective way for people to substantially reduce their pain without medications,” Zeidan said.

Focused attention is a form of mindfulness meditation where people are taught to attend to the breath to reduce mental distractions and be in the present moment.

Meditation practice in Alabama prison helps lower violence

William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility, Alabama’s toughest prison, has implemented a model program based on the meditation practice Called Vipassana (which is pronounced vuh-’POSH-uh-nuh), one that dates back 2500 years to Buddha,  to help instill self-control and social skills never before learned in life before prison.

So far, 10 percent of the inmates have completed the program. “The inmates are less angry, they are better able to conduct themselves, they are more mindful of themselves and others, and overall there has been a 20 percent reduction in disciplinary action for those who have actually completed the course,” said Dr. Ronald Cavanaugh from Alabama Department of Corrections.

“I had a lot of anger issues, and this has given me a way to deal with it,” said Ronald McKeithen, who is serving life without parole for robbery.

Mindfulness meditation changes brain in eight weeks

By practicing daily mindfulness meditation – which focuses on nonjudgmental awareness of sensations, feelings and state of mind – meditators can experience measurable changes to the brain’s regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress in as little as eight weeks.

A study conducted by a team led by Harvard-affiliated researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital is the first of its kind to document such physical changes in a meditator’s brain matter. MR images showed increased grey-matter density in the hippocampus, known to be important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection. Some participants, who meditated for an average of 27 minutes, also reported reduced stress, and these reports were correlated with decreased grey-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in anxiety and stress. No changes were noted in the control group, confirming that the brain matter changes were not just from the passage of time.

“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says Sara Lazar, PhD, of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, the study’s senior author. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

Zen meditators and the art of pain tolerance

What advantage do Zen meditators have over non-meditators? It seems their tolerance to pain, in addition to many other health benefits.

Researchers at the Université de Montréal enlisted the aid of a group of Zen meditators and compared their responses to non-meditators. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to record their brain responses after painful stimuli was applied, the experienced meditators showed decreased activity in the areas responsible for cognition, emotion and memory (the prefrontal cortex, amygdala and hippocampus), therefore eliminating the brain’s mental processing of pain.

“The results suggest that Zen meditators may have a training-related ability to disengage some higher-order brain processes, while still experiencing the stimulus,” says Pierre Rainville, researcher at the Université de Montréal. “Such an ability could have widespread and profound implications for pain and emotion regulation and cognitive control. This behavior is consistent with the mindset of Zen and with the notion of mindfulness.”

Mindfulness Meditation May Ease Fatigue, Depression in Multiple Sclerosis

American Academy of Neurology: Learning mindfulness meditation may help people who have multiple sclerosis (MS) with the fatigue, depression and other life challenges that commonly accompany the disease, according to a study published in the September 28, 2010, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

In the study, people who took an eight-week class in mindfulness meditation training reduced their fatigue and depression and improved overall quality of life compared to people with MS who received only usual medical care. The positive effects continued for at least six months.

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Mindfulness meditation increases well-being in adolescent boys

University of Cambridge: ‘Mindfulness’, the process of learning to become more aware of our ongoing experiences, increases well-being in adolescent boys, a new study reports.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge analyzed 155 boys from two independent UK schools, Tonbridge and Hampton, before and after a four-week crash course in mindfulness. After the trial period, the 14 and 15 year-old boys were found to have increased well-being, defined as the combination of feeling good (including positive emotions such as happiness, contentment, interest and affection) and functioning well.

Professor Felicia Huppert of the Well-being Institute at the University of Cambridge said: “More and more we are realising the importance of supporting the overall mental health of children. Our study demonstrates that this type of training improves well-being in adolescents and that the more they practice, the greater the benefits. Importantly, many of the students genuinely enjoyed the exercises and said they intended to continue them – a good sign that many children would be receptive to this type of intervention.

“Another significant aspect of this study is that adolescents who suffered from higher levels of anxiety were the ones who benefitted most from the training.”

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Brain Waves and Meditation

Norwegian University of Science and Technology: Forget about crystals, candles, Eastern philosophy, and about sitting and breathing in awkward ways. Meditation research explores how the brain works when we refrain from concentration, rumination and intentional thinking. Electrical brain waves suggest that mental activity during meditation is wakeful and relaxed.

“Given the popularity and effectiveness of meditation as a means of alleviating stress and maintaining good health, there is a pressing need for a rigorous investigation of how it affects brain function,” says Professor Jim Lagopoulos of Sydney University, Australia. Lagopoulos is the principal investigator of a joint study between his university and researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) on changes in electrical brain activity during nondirective meditation.

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