Meditation aids psoriasis

[ellenrr]

This is an excerpt from a scholarly long article detailing Jon Kabot-Zinn's work with psoriasis patients. I give you the url, but am only posting the conclusion.

below that I give a link to a more popularized, easier to read version.

The skin has long been known as an organ system that responds to emotional stress and to psychological influences with both short- and long-lasting effects.
There is recent evidence connecting psychological stress (in caregivers of relatives with Alzheimer's Disease), rates of wound healing, and levels of the cytokine, interleukin, a potential immunological mediator of wound healing.

The present study sought to investigate the possible effect of a stress reduction intervention on rates of skin clearing in patients with psoriasis undergoing phototherapy as a potential model system for the study of psychological factors related to an observable healing process.

The results {of study} suggest that the rate of skin clearing in patients with moderate to severe psoriasis can be accelerated when subjects engage in an audiotape-guided, meditative stress reduction exercise during their treatment sessions.

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Owner/My%20Documents/Downloads/625.pdf

~~~
To test his theories, Kabat-Zinn connected with dermatologists in the psoriasis phototherapy clinic at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine.

In a pilot study and then a full trial with several dozen participants, psoriasis patients receiving ultraviolet light therapy were divided into two groups. One group listened to recordings of mindfulness instructions while receiving light therapy; another group went through the therapy without the recordings.

Patients who listened to the recordings saw their psoriasis clear significantly faster than those assigned to the group that did not hear the recordings. For example, patients undergoing PUVA [the light-sensitizing drug psoralen and ultraviolet light A phototherapy] while listening to recordings had 50 percent skin clearing in an average of 48.5 days, compared with 85 days for the group that did not listen to the tapes.

The study results were published in 1998 in the academic journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

Though the psoriasis studies were small by scientific standards, the results encouraged Kabat-Zinn to use the recordings as part of a program he was developing called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction [MBSR].

Now in use at medical centers around the world, this stress-reduction program is increasingly seen as a litmus test of how meditation can affect medical outcomes.


https://www.psoriasis.org/advance/can-quieting-mind-quiet-psoriasis-mindfulness-meditation

[still_one]

1. It is well known that stress can cause people to break out, so that stress would aggravate psoriasis

doesn't surprise me

[Warpy]

2. All stress related diseases respond to meditation

because deep meditation gives the body a half hour or so of a vacation from stressors. The problem is that a lot of people aren't able to concentrate deeply enough to accomplish it. Meditation is hard work until you figure out how to do it.