Reducing blood pressure? Treating addiction? The surprising health benefits of mindfulness

Mindfulness, we learned recently, could help stave off dementia. Researchers from University College London found an association between moderate to severe anxiety and future dementia, but said in their report that therapies such as mindfulness and meditation might reduce the risk of dementia by treating the anxiety that often precedes it.

Their findings make for another feather in the cap of mindfulness, which the NHS defines as paying more attention to the present moment, to your own thoughts and feelings, and to the world around you – as opposed to ruminating on abstract worries.

But a lowered risk of dementia is one of several significant health benefits that have been linked to mindfulness. Here is a selection of the rest.

Treating depression

Mindfulness can control depression as well as mood-boosting drugs, the biggest ever review of the practice showed in 2016. A meta-analysis into the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive behavioural therapy by Oxford University found that the treatment prevented people relapsing as well as anti-depressants. Researchers said it was too early to say that the therapy is better than drugs, but that it “does clearly offer those with a substantial history of depression a new approach to learning skills to stay well in the long-term.”

Lowering blood pressure

A Harvard study, published last month, found that meditation can decrease blood pressure. The study wasn’t conducted on a large scale, so don’t be binning your beta blockers just yet, but what the researchers found was that an eight-week period of regular meditation changed the expression of genes that regulate inflammation, circadian rhythms and glucose metabolism.

Alleviating chronic pain

Ameta-analysis published in 2016 by the Annals of Behavioural Medicine found that mindfulness meditation can reduce pain somewhat. Then again, twoother meta-analyses found that more research was required.

Fighting addiction

A 2017 meta-analysis concluded (albeit very tentatively) that mindfulness-based relapse prevention may help reduce drug addicts’ cravings.

Increasing exercise

Another meta-analysis, which you can peruse at your leisure here, found that mindfulness training, at least in the short-term, can lessen our impulse-eating while making us more likely to exercise more. The study’s writers called for further research into whether mindfulness can help with long-term weight loss.

And the rest…

A round-up by the Harvard Gazette included irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, and post-traumatic stress disorder among the other conditions that mindfulness may help with, at least according to studies of varying credibility. Mindfulness offers exciting opportunities for research, but should not be thought of as a universal replacement for conventional treatment. As another review explained, “misinformation and poor methodology associated with past studies of mindfulness may lead public consumers to be harmed, misled, and disappointed.”