Meditating for 30 minutes every day can improve anxiety and depression symptoms.
According to new analysis of previously published research, regular bouts of meditation can alleviate some pain symptoms as well as stress.
Madhav Goyal, an assistant professor at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine and leader of the study, said: “A lot of people use meditation, but it’s not a practice considered part of mainstream medical therapy for anything.”
“In our study, meditation appeared to provide as much relief from some anxiety and depression symptoms as what other studies have found from antidepressants,” he added.
Meditation was also found to have a superior effect to the placebo.
The researchers studied 47 clinical trials performed in June 2013 on over 3,500 participants. The patients had various mental and physical health issues such as depression, anxiety, stress and heart disease.
Mr Goyal remarked that many people were wrong in their thinking that meditation was purely sitting down and not doing anything. He said that it was actually an active training of the mind to increase awareness, but that different meditation programmes went about this training in different ways.
