PARDES
health
&
LIFE STYLE
30 Minutes
of Meditation Can Eliminate
Anxiety and Depression
A group of scientists in Washington, which also includes a
member of Indian origin, have found that 30 minutes of meditation can lead to a reduction in the symptoms of depression
and anxiety.
Madhav Goyal, assistant professor in the Division of General
Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine, has said that although many people use meditation
to attain mental calmness, it is not a method that is supported
by modern medicine. However, the research team has found
that meditation is capable of providing as much relief as people
obtain by ingesting antidepressants.
The patients on whom the study was conducted were not
suffering from full-blown depression or anxiety.
Scientists have assessed the degree to which the symptoms
have changed in people who were suffering from other medical conditions such as fibromyalgia and insomnia, although
only a handful have been found to have mental illness.
Goyal and his colleagues have determined that “mindfulness
meditation,” a form of Buddhist meditation that is designed to
focus on nonjudgemental and precise attention to the moment
at hand, can be very helpful for alleviating aches and pains as
well as the symptoms of stress. The result had been found to be
consistent, even when scientists controlled for the possibility of
the placebo effect, in which they observed the patients to feel
better even when they did not receive any medicinal treatment
because they knew that they were getting help anyways.
In order to conduct this study, the scientists held 47 clinical
trials that were performed in June 2013 among 3,515 people
that involved various psychological and physiological issues
such as stress, anxiety, depression, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, chronic pain, etc., and meditation. After an eightweek-long training in meditation, the study participants’ medical conditions were found to have improved. They found low
evidence of stress and an improvement in the overall quality of
life. In the next six months, the [\