As you may know, anxiety can cause weight loss. Rapid, serious weight loss.
But did you know the reciprocal applies: an attempt to lose weight can also cause anxiety?
Weight loss can indeed be stressful; successful or not, it can be grueling to the psyche and cause abnormal levels of anxiety.
Knowing this, researchers from Brazil’s Bahiana School of Medicine and Public Health set out to investigate the role meditation might play in relieving that anxiety.
The Research
Employing a randomized, controlled, evaluator-blinded clinical trial, researchers observed 41 patients of a weight maintenance program. Each had attained a mean Body Mass Index of 24.5, in a median period of 7 months.
Participants were split into two groups: the variable group receiving the intervention included an 8-week healing meditation program, consisting of a weekly session lasting one hour in length; the control group was wait-listed and received no meditation therapy but instead the standard clinical program care.
Total anxiety was measured using the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAM-A), before and after the intervention. Secondary analyses included a comparison of meditation’s effect on the somatic and psychic components of the scale.
Meditation Helps Weight Loss
The research team found that, by trial’s conclusion, anxiety measured markedly lower in the meditation group than the control group.
The team concluded healing meditation significantly reduces anxiety in obese individuals enduring a weight maintenance program.
Fuel for an auxiliary component to any weight-loss program, perhaps.
The study was published in the journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine.
- Nelson Pahl
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