When Registered Psychologist Michael Jimenez asked the Cancer Patients if they were in control of their minds, many were astonished to realize how their minds were difficult to control - wandering from one thought to another - sometimes controllable and sometimes not.
Jimenez related the definition of mindfulness according to Kabat-Zinn, a pioneer in the field of mindfulness as “The awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally”(Kabat-Zinn, in Purser, 2015).
He shared the results of research on mindfulness including :
Women in the meditation group had increased levels of physiological melatonin compared to the non-meditation group. This is significant since melatonin has been shown in multiple studies to have anti-cancer properties. (Meditation, melatonin and breast/prostate cancer: hypothesis and preliminary data.
Massion AO, Teas J, Hebert JR, Wertheimer MD, Kabat-Zinn J
Med Hypotheses. 1995 Jan; 44(1):39-46.)
Pain occurs in 20% to 50% of patients with cancer, and approximately 80% of patients with advanced-stage cancer have moderate to severe pain (Cancer pain. Bruera E, Kim HN. JAMA. 2003;290:2476–2479) Current management techniques commonly used include medications, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, agents used as nerve blocks, radioisotopes. Mindfulness has recently been explored as an effective pain control modality.
Moreover, the cancer patients underwent the basic techniques of mindfulness which included a few of the following techniques shown on the table below from the research of Mehta, et al.
Source : Mehta, R., Sharma, K., Potters, L., Wernicke, A. G., & Parashar, B. (2019). Evidence for the Role of Mindfulness in Cancer: Benefits and Techniques. Cureus, 11(5), e4629. doi:10.7759/cureus.4629
Comments