Advances in Mind-Body Medicine最新文献

No Abstract Available.

Stress is a key contributor to several major life-threatening illnesses including depression and cardiovascular disease. Behavioral strategies that enable individuals to regulate stress responses can lead to improved health and well-being. Such practices may also help reduce required clinical interventions, ease pressure on the National Health Service (NHS), and reduce the need for medical and psychological treatments. This study explores the effects of a novel mind-body therapy for stress reduction and enhanced well-being. A single-group longitudinal intervention design was applied in a study comprising 29 healthy volunteers. The 10-day program was delivered online and consisted of deep-breathing exercises, cold-water exposure, and mindfulness meditation. Participant measures of perceived stress, depression symptoms, and mental well-being were taken at baseline and after completing the 10-day program. A MANOVA analysis revealed significant pre-post intervention differences for all psychometric measures, suggesting the intervention elicited improvements in symptoms of stress, well-being, and depression. This study provides preliminary evidence supporting the efficacy of an innovative mind-body therapy that may be learned and used by individuals to help modulate stress responses, improve mood levels, and enhance well-being. Future research could utilize multi-modal controlled study designs to understand the psychophysiological mechanisms associated with the benefits this practice may generate.

Context: Qigong, a mind-body practice in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), can improve cognitive functions, emotional balance, attention, multitask management, stress-coping, and well-being. One limitation of Qigong research is a lack of adequate controls.

Objective: The current study intended to evaluate whether a single 5-min practice of a White Ball (WB) Qigong exercise could improve the perceptual auditory attention, divided and focused, in adults and whether obtaining potential effects would require a minimum level of training.

Design: The research team designed a prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled, and single-blinded study.

Setting: The study took place at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS) at the University of Porto in Porto, Portugal.

Participants: Participants were 55 students at the University of Porto, 30 of whom were students attending the second year of medical school at ICBAS with no experience in Qigong and 25 of whom were students in the specialization and Master's programs in TCM with experience in Qigong.

Intervention: The research team randomly distributed the 30 participants without experience into two groups, a negative control group (n = 15), who watched a wildlife video for 5 min in an orthostatic position, and a positive control group , the verum Qigong group (n = 15), who participated in 5 min of Qigong practice. The Qigong-practitioner group (n = 25), the intervention group, participated in the same 5-min Qigong, doing it with expertise.

Outcome measures: The study measured reaction time (RT) under two experimental conditions, one an auditory RT task and the second an auditory RT task with visual distraction. The procedure was constant for all the studied groups.

Results: Postintervention, the reaction time (RT) in the negative control and the verum Qigong groups hadn't changed significantly (P > .05), while that of the Qigong-practitioner group had decreased significantly, with shorter RTs under the two experimental conditions, with P = .006 for the auditory RT and P = .003 for the auditory + visual distraction. Qigong may induce a conditioning effect that comes with regular practice.

Conclusions: The WB Qigong had a positive effect on the AA mechanism, with a significant reduction in RT. The results support the importance of practice to achieve positive effects. People with neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism and ADHD, struggle every day for sensory integration of AA mechanisms. Qigong can be taught and easily learned from the age of 2 years until senior ages, and it's a safe and very low-cost intervention that deserves to be researched further in clinical trials. These potential benefits of Qigong should be confirmed by future studies.

A 54-year-old postmenopausal woman was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACCA) of the right breast. She had complaints of pain in the upper quadrant of the right breast, stress, disturbed sleep, and depression. Her self-reported pain intensity using the visual analog scale (VAS) was 8 and her perceived stress scale value was 19. Her depression score on the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) was 12. Her quality of sleep, evaluated using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), was 18. She was given integrated naturopathy and yoga therapy for 43 days. She showed a reduction in pain, stress, and depression scores. Her quality of sleep also improved after the integrated naturopathy and yoga therapy. Our structured integrated naturopathy and yoga therapy improved pain, stress, depression, and sleep quality in a postmenopausal breast cancer patient and may be used as adjuvant therapy for patients with breast cancer.

Context: Yoga is beneficial in enhancing mental health and consequently cognitive growth. Some studies have show that yoga practice can improve cognitive functioning in children.

Objective: The study intended to evaluate the effectiveness of a school-based yoga intervention on the cognitive abilities-attention and memory-of adolescents.

Design: The research team conducted a one-group, pretest-posttest study.

Setting: The study occurred at a rural residential school in Udupi, Karnataka, and South India.

Participants: Participants were a convenience sample of 36 adolescents, with a mean age of 12.19 ± 0.4 years, in the seventh grade at the school.

Intervention: A senior yoga expert prepared a structured, yoga-intervention module, which was implemented, with each session lasting one hour and occurring five days a week for 12 weeks.

Outcome measures: The Digit Span Forward (DSF) and Digit Span Backward (DSB) tests and Letter-Number Sequencing (LNS) test were used by a trained research examiner to evaluate cognition.

Results: Comparing the mean DSB, total digit span score, and LNS at baseline and postintervention showed significantly higher posttest scores than pretest ones, with P = .005, P = .005, and P = .001, respectively.

Conclusions: Yoga training improves cognitive functions and is a simple, low-cost, and effective adjuvant modality.

Context: Higher Brain Living (HBL) is a light-touch therapy, which practitioners claim can increase well-being. Although studies have suggested that its component elements-light touch, focused breathing, and positive self-talk-can increase well-being for specific populations in specific contexts, no empirical research has occurred on HBL's efficacy.

Objective: The study intended to measure the effects of HBL therapy on the well-being of individuals who have received it.

Design: The research team designed a quasi-experimental controlled trial that used a survey to gather self-reported data related to well-being.

Setting: The study took place in individual HBL practitioners' locations throughout the USA.

Participants: Participants were adults who had attended an introductory presentation about HBL.

Intervention: Participants were assigned to one of three groups: (1) the intervention group, who had responded to the baseline and postintervention surveys and had participated in HBL sessions (n = 14); (2) the control group, who had responded to the baseline and postintervention surveys and had not participated in HBL sessions (n = 9); and (3) the noncompleter group who had responded to the baseline surveys and had not completed the postintervention survey (n = 54).

Outcome measures: Well-being was assessed using five measures that evaluated constructs associated with well-being: (1) happiness using the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS), (2) anxiety using the Anxiety Index (AI), (3) depression using Depression Index (DI) (4) mastery using the Pearlin Mastery Scale (PM), and (5) flourishing using the Flourishing Scale (FS).

Results: The study included baseline data from 77 respondents; 23 participants completed the surveys at baseline and postintervention, 14 in the intervention group and 9 in the control group. A statistically significant, greater improvement occurred for the intervention group in the measures for flourishing, mastery, and happiness compared to the control group.

Conclusions: The current study provides a foundation of empirical evidence suggesting the effectiveness of HBL as a potential treatment for improving well-being, upon which further investigation can be based.

Context: Mental health practitioners have postulated that smartphone addiction is a disorder characterized by maladaptive and problematic behavior, and treatment modalities are scarce. Yoga has been found to be a viable tool for addiction treatment and other psychiatric conditions, but no specific validated module is currently available for smartphone addiction.

Objective: The study intended: (1) to develop a yoga-based intervention for smartphone addiction, based on the ancient literature of yoga and a modern literature review; (2) to validate the developed module with experts from different schools of yoga; and (3) to test the module's feasibility and efficacy for young adolescents, with the objective of creating biopsychosocial well-being.

Design: The research team first conducted a search of traditional and contemporary literature, with the objective of developing the yoga program. That yoga program was then sent to yoga experts for content validation. A pilot study then tested the feasibility of using the developed module for individuals with internet and smartphone addiction.

Setting: The study took place in Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (S-VYASA) University, Bengaluru, India.

Participants: For content validity, participants were 15 yoga experts who had >10 years of experience in treating mental health disorders. For feasibility in a pilot study, participants were 22 students from an engineering college in Bengaluru, South India.

Outcome measures: For content validity, the experts' opinions were rated using a content validation ratio (CVR) through Lawshe's formula. For the feasibility study, assessments were performed at baseline and post intervention. Data were collected to evaluate: (1) addiction level using the Smartphone Addiction Scale - Short Version (SAS-SV), (2) impulsiveness using the Barat Impulsive Scale (BIS); (3) sleep problems using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), (4) mindfulness using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), (4) self-regulation using the Short Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SSRQ); and general health using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12).

Results: In the final version of the module, 26 out of 35 items (74.28%) of the practices in the developed program were retained, together with the modifications suggested by the experts. The content validity index for the whole module, an average of all CVRs, was 0.74. The study found significant reductions in the most symptom scores after participants practiced the yoga module for six weeks.

Conclusions: A yoga module for smartphone addiction was developed, validated, and checked for feasibility. The content validity of the module was found to be good. The module was found to potentially useful for reducing symptoms in individuals with smartphone addiction

Aim: The purpose of this article is to enhance our understanding of prayer healing by studying a case which was described as a 'remarkable healing' by a medical assessment team at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre (UMC) in the Netherlands.

Method: This retrospective, case-based study of prayer healing investigated numerous reported healings using both medical files and patient narratives. A medical assessment team evaluated the associated medical files, as well as any experiential data. The instances of healing could be classified as 'remarkable' or 'unexplained.' Experiential data were obtained by qualitative, in-depth interviews. The study was transdisciplinary in nature, involving medical, psychological, theological, and philosophical perspectives. The object was to understand such healings within the broader framework of the science-religion debate.

Results: We present the case of a female patient, born in 1959, with Parkinson disease who experienced instantaneous, nearly complete healing in 2012 after intercessory prayer. At that point the disease was at an advanced stage, rapidly progressive, with major debilitating symptoms. High doses of oral medication were required. Following this healing there was no recurrence of her former symptoms, while the remaining symptoms continued to improve. She regained all of her capacities at work, as well as in daily life. The medical assessment team described her recovery as 'remarkable.' The patient reported that she had always 'lived with God,' and that at a point when she had given up hope, 'life was given back to her.' This recovery did not make her immune to other illnesses and suffering, but it did strengthen her belief that God cares about human beings.

Conclusion: This remarkable healing and its context astonished the patient, her family, and her doctors. The clinical course was extraordinary, contradicting data from imaging studies, as well as the common understanding of this disease. This case also raised questions about medical assumptions. Any attempt to investigate such healings requires the involvement of other disciplines. A transdisciplinary approach that includes experiential knowledge would be helpful. Against the background of the science-religion debate, we feel that the most helpful approach would be one of complementarity and dialogue, rather than stoking controversy.

There is substantial evidence that spiritual well-being is an important determinant of overall health, longevity and quality of life, especially in patients with severe illness. While most physicians would agree that spiritual well-being is an important factor in their patients' health, the spiritual needs and well-being of patients are largely ignored and rarely addressed by healthcare providers, representing a significant gap in care. Physicians often cite a lack of training or comfort in assessing and/or addressing patients' spiritual needs, and a lack of research on the safety and efficacy of spiritual interventions as barriers to care. In this review, we discuss the effects of spiritual well-being on health, and the importance of assessing and addressing patients' spiritual needs, highlight the need for methodic, rigorous high-quality studies and improved physician education in identifying and addressing patients' spiritual needs.

There is growing evidence linking epigenetic mutations to neurologic disorders such as epilepsy. The effect of the medications primarily used to treat neurologic disorders has recently been studied, including research on epilepsy and the epigenetic process. The impact of the widely used medication diazepam on epigenomics, microRNA levels, the ensuing genetic exposure and potential clinical effects was reviewed. The action of diazepam, particularly in altering the synthesis of enzyme 5' adenosine monophosphate activated protein kinase (AMPK) was found to affect many enzymes, which changes or modifies the epigenetics. Epigenetic enzymes such as histone acetyltransferases (HATs), class II histone deacetylases (HDACs) and DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs) are mainly activated by AMPKs, including the phosphorylate substrates, which often lead to their inhibition, although HAT1 activity may be improved. It has been reported that diazepam can reduce histone methyltransferase expression exposure, may increase class III histone deacetylases activity and may decrease the effect of DNA methyltransferases inhibitors. Diazepam has been found to contribute to mutations of the epigenome and genetic expression, and may protect against neurologic disorders, aging, dementia and several brain diseases. It has also been found that microRNA expression can be influenced by diazepam treatment and may have neurologic effects. Although the reported effects of diazepam on epigenetic enzymes of are equally effective in both amplifying and reducing acetylation of histone, histone and DNA methylation and gene expression, the effect of diazepam on the epigenome, genetic expression, and subsequent effects in all healthy diazepam users is unclear.