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Fight chronic pain with yoga and meditation: It restores mental and physical health

Fight chronic pain with yoga and meditation: It restores mental and physical health
They often come to mind when we think of managing mental health disorders. However, yoga emerges as a natural, non-pharmaceutical method with the potential to significantly mitigate the symptoms of conditions like anxiety, depression, and PTSD through regular practice.

Yoga and meditation can benefit patients of chronic pain, leading to significant improvement in perceptions of pain, mood and functional capacity.

Written by Jahnavi Sarma |Updated : October 3, 2020 3:54 PM IST

Chronic pain is a common and serious medical condition affecting an estimated 100 million people in the US, which correlates with annual costs of approximately $635 billion. It is a debilitating condition where your body pains for weeks and months without any relief. It can affect your day-to-day life and also your mental health. It can be due to may conditions including an injury, nerve damage, infections, or underlying health conditions like fibromyalgia and arthritis. Usually, a doctor prescribes pain medications to deal with the problem. But these drugs come with their own set of side-effects. According to experts, this kind of pain may originate in the body as well as in the brain or spinal cord. It is often difficult to treat and sometimes psychological treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy and commitment therapy may also be adopted for improving the quality of life in patients.

Patients today are seeking new ways to cope with chronic pain and effective non-pharmaceutical treatments are available for this purpose. One can choose from many options. According to a new study, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course -- yoga and meditation can majorly benefit patients with chronic pain and depression, leading to significant improvement in participant perceptions of pain, mood and functional capacity. According to the study, published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, most of the participants, 89 per cent to be exact, reported the programme helped them find ways to better cope with their pain while 11 per cent remained neutral.

Managing pain can support the process of healing

The small-scale study at the Community Health Clinics of Benton and Linn County in the US was conducted in a semi-rural population in Oregon, US, where issues of affordability, addiction and access to care are common. Participants received intensive instruction in mindfulness meditation and mindful hatha yoga during an eight-week period. Many people have lost hope because, in most cases, chronic pain will never fully resolve. However, mindful yoga and meditation can help improve the structure and function of the body, which supports the process of healing.

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Healing and curing are inherently different, say researchers. Curing means eliminating disease, while healing refers to becoming more whole. With chronic pain, healing involves learning to live with a level of pain this is manageable. For this, yoga and meditation can be very beneficial, they added.

Medication, yoga can change perception of pain

The study found mindful meditation and yoga led to significant improvements in patients' perceptions of pain, depression and disability. Following the course, the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) scores, a standard measure of depression, dropped by 3.7 points on a 27-point scale. According to the researchers, some patients experience a similar drop from the use of an antidepressant. They further add that chronic pain often goes hand-in-hand with depression. Mindfulness-based meditation and yoga can help restore both a patient's mental and physical health and can be effective alone or in combination with other treatments such as therapy and medication.

(With inputs from IANS)