Breaking Bad Habits

Over a third of Americans use complementary and alternative medicine to treat their ailments. Collectively, patients will spend $33.9 billion in out-of-pocket expenses on fish oil, glucosamine, Echinacea, acupuncture, chiropractic medicine, massage therapy and meditation classes. The most common uses were for back pain, neck pain, joint pain and other musculoskeletal conditions. At one time, people wondered, “Why learn to meditate if I’m not a Buddhist?” The statistics confirm that was once viewed as a “weird New Age thing” has now gone mainstream in the U.S., perhaps due to all the positive press meditation exercises has received in the news.

If you’re an insomniac, then you needn’t ask “why learn to meditate” at all — for the secret lies in deep relaxation meditation. At the June 2009 Associated Professional Sleep Societies meeting, researchers from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Evanston, Illinois reported their findings that daytime meditation improved the quality of sleep in patients with insomnia. Patients noted marked improvement in their sleep latency, total sleep time, total wake time, sleep efficiency, sleep quality and depression symptoms after two months of practicing Kriya Yoga meditation methods. “Results of the study show that teaching deep relaxation techniques during the daytime can help improve sleep at night,” said study leader Ramadevi Gourineni MD.

Zen meditation, one of the types of meditation, can lower pain sensitivity both in and out of a meditative state. The study conducted by the Université de Montréal found that those who meditate breathed at an average of 12 breaths per minutes, compared to 15 breaths per minute in those who don’t meditate. The ultimate result for practitioners was an 18% reduction in pain sensitivity. “If meditation can change the way someone feels pain, thereby reducing the amount of pain medication required for an ailment, that would be clearly beneficial,” explains co-author Joshua A. Grant. The question of “why learn to meditate” becomes less and less significant in the wake of discoveries like this one.

People who once wondered “why learn to meditate” are now finding they are the biggest advocates of meditation. Physicians are using meditation to cut down on fatigue, stress and burn-out. Employers are incorporating yoga and meditation into their employees’ work days to increase productivity and boost office morale. Patients are using different types of meditation to help when traditional medicine has failed them, for everything from chronic joint pain to depression. We’re likely to see many exciting findings in the coming years, given the amount of research being conducted and the advancement of MRI brain scan technology.

Beth Kaminski is the leading expert in the field of treatment for anxiety attacks and treating panic disorder. For more information on tips to stop these attacks as well as how to prevent panic attacks, visit her site today.

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