An autoimmune disease, multiple sclerosis damages the myelin sheath (covering) around the neurons in the brain and spinal cord responsible for sending signals to other parts of the body. That can lead to symptoms such as brain fog, depression, muscle spasticity and fatigue, as well as pain and sleep disturbances. Meditation is showing promise as a way to not only cope with many of these conditions, but also to help reduce relapse rates. How can that be?
“When I speak with my MS patients who are relapsing, they often indicate stress as playing a role in their symptom flare-up. In those cases, I recommend some sort of stress management technique. Frequently, I suggest a mindfulness meditation practice of 15 to 20 minutes a day, sitting still and comfortably, while focusing on the breath as it goes in and out,” explains Dr. Steven Schechter, a neurologist with Beaumont Health in Royal Oaks, Michigan. “When a thought comes up, I suggest they just let it go and return to the breath.”
Research backs up Dr. Schechter’s approach. In a 2014 study published in the journal Psychological Medicine, scientists at Northwestern University followed 121 MS patients for four years. The volunteers agreed to undergo scheduled magnetic resonance imaging scans to monitor their disease activity. During this period, half the patients underwent stress management therapy (such as meditation) while the other half did not. The results showed that stress management therapy reduced the development of new brain lesions, a signature of relapse.
Both depression and fatigue are common MS symptoms, and once again, meditation seems to help. According to research published in the September 2010 issue of the journal Neurology, 75 patients with MS who took an eight-week course in mindfulness meditation training had markedly less fatigue and depression than the control group of 75 MS patients who did not meditate. The positive effect of the meditation training lasted six months or longer. “Meditation appears to be a useful addition along with medication for certain MS symptoms such as depression,” says Dr. Barbara Giesser, professor of clinical neurology and clinical director of UCLA’s David Geffen Multiple Sclerosis Program in Los Angeles.
But Giesser cautions: “When it comes to depression medication, or any drug for that matter, patients should always speak with their doctor before making changes in treatment."
What about pain relief? The National MS Society reports that 55 percent of MS patients experience clinically significant pain intermittently, while 48 percent are troubled by constant chronic pain.
It looks like meditation can help relieve the agony for some MS sufferers. Scientists from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, studied the effect of meditation on pain, as reported in a 2016 issue in the Journal of Neuroscience. During the study, MS volunteers were divided into four groups for a four-day (20 minutes per day) trial. The four treatments examined included meditation plus naloxone (the drug that blocks or reverses the effects of opioid medication; no meditation plus naloxone; meditation plus saline (a mixture of water and sodium chloride) used as a placebo; or non-meditation control plus saline placebo. The researchers induced intense discomfort by using a thermal probe to heat a small area of the participant’s skin to 120.2 degrees Fahrenheit, a level of heat most people find extremely painful. The study’s participants rated their pain using a sliding scale. The result? Pain was reduced by 24 percent in the meditation group that also received the naloxone and 21 percent in the meditation group that received the placebo-saline injection. The non-meditation control groups reported increases in pain regardless of whether they got the naloxone or placebo-saline injection.
Meditation may also get to the root of MS. “Researchers discovered that meditation actually changes the brain,” Schechter says. “One way it does it is by shutting down genes that promote inflammation. When it comes to MS, inflammation is the underlying mechanism that leads to demyelination. So anything that can be done to reduce it is worth trying.” Research out of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and published in Biological Psychiatry Journal in 2016, showed that mindfulness meditation, compared to relaxation training, reduced Interleukin-6, an inflammatory biomarker.
What’s more, there are hundreds of studies that may not be directly associated with MS, but report meditation can improve overall health and well-being by: increasing the ability to concentrate, slowing down aging (meditators have longer telomeres, the caps on chromosomes indicative of biological age) and helping us feel happier, among other perks.
“As it turns out, a little mindfulness might be good for all of us,” Giesser says.
source - http://health.usnews.com/health-care/patient-advice/articles/2017-08-07/can-meditation-improve-the-quality-of-life-for-ms-patients
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