“Mindfulness is really beneficial for individuals with chronic pain or long-term illness to give them some semblance of power and control over their own feelings and emotions [about their disease and] the pain they’re having,” Ms. Rossi says. “The mind affects the brain and immune system and body as a whole. … It’s important to understand these things are connected, and no matter how much pain medication you give someone, if they can’t deal with the stress of being in pain, that will amplify their pain.”
Mindfulness training can help patients with acceptance of pain, physical functioning, general medical symptom severity and the ability to cope with daily life.1 “An aim of mindfulness practice is to take greater responsibility for one’s life choices. Thus, mindfulness may promote a more participatory medicine by engaging and strengthening an individual’s internal resources for optimizing health in both prevention of and recovery from illness.”1
Recent research has shown that mindfulness has application for:
- Treating anxiety and mood problems in clinical populations (i.e., cancer, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, other psychiatric or medical conditions);2
- Remediating sleep problems among older adults and reducing sleep-related daytime impairment;3
- Significantly reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression among cancer patients and survivors with symptoms of anxiety and depression;4 and
- Significantly improving function and quality of life and symptoms, preventing a social decline, and reducing societal costs among patients with bodily distress syndrome (i.e., unifying definition of various conditions, such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and somatization disorder).5
With regard to rheumatology, mindfulness practices have shown application for:
- Improving psychological distress, self-efficacy pain and symptoms, emotional processing, fatigue, self-care ability, and overall well-being in patients with inflammatory rheumatic joint diseases;6
- Protecting against psychological distress associated with disability in patients with RA;7
- Complementing medical disease management in patients with RA by improving psychological distress and strengthening well-being;8
- Alleviating symptoms in patients with fibromyalgia;9 and
- Improving the efficacy of traditional therapies for psoriasis.10
Ultimately, evidence suggests what may be common sense—those who are in control of their emotions are more successful at dealing with adversity, such as living with a chronic disease, and they tend to be more successful professionally than those who are ruled by their emotions. In fact, research shows that physicians also may benefit from practicing mindfulness. In one study, medical students who underwent mindfulness training exhibited reduced psychological distress and increased empathy compared with the control group.11
More investigation is needed to solidify the link between mindfulness and medicine, but the evidence to date is encouraging and suggests that mindfulness could improve medicine for patients and practitioners alike. According to Dr. Kabat-Zinn and his coauthor, Dr. David S. Ludwig, “Mindfulness may hold promise as a potential way to help prevent and treat disease, increase ability to cope with pain and chronic illness, reduce stress in patients and practitioners, foster compassion, improve quality of care and reduce medical errors.”1
