The technique known as mindfulness , based on the concentration of attention and mindfulness of Buddhist meditation, is an increasingly widespread treatment in the West to treat the anxiety of daily life, but its effectiveness has not yet been tested in a rigorous and convincing way. Now, a clinical study from Georgetown University Medical Center sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health has found physiological evidence that this practice does indeed help combat anxiety .
The researchers, led by Elizabeth A. Hoge, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center, found that the inflammatory reaction and the release of hormones associated with stress in a stressful situation were significantly reduced in patients affected by anxiety disorders after a mindfulness meditation course . In contrast, patients with anxiety who did not receive the course worsened.
The study, published in the journal Psychiatry Research , was conducted with 89 people affected by generalized anxiety disorder , which leads patients to suffer from a chronic state of excessive worry and is estimated to affect seven million people in the United States alone. The patients were divided into two groups at random. Those integrated in the first group received an eight-week course of mindfulness meditation focused on reducing stress, while those of the other group attended a course, also of eight weeks, of stress treatment based on a healthy diet, good sleep habits and other exercises.
Other previous studies on meditation techniques had already been done in the United States, Hoge says, but their validity is doubtful because the participants were aware of the type of experiment they were being subjected to and therefore could be subject to some kind of effect. placebo. However, the participants in this research underwent the treatment without knowing what the researchers were interested in.
In this case, the participants were subjected to the so-called Trier Social Stress Test, a standard technique to induce a stress response that consists of forcing them to make a short speech in front of an audience and to perform other anxiety-provoking actions. Then they measured their levels of the hormone ACTH and various proteins associated with inflammatory responses. Well, those included in the control group barely reduced their anxiety levels, while those who had received the mindfulness course improved remarkably and their anxiety markers showed a notable drop.
