Jul

25

Meditation slows AIDS progression

Filed Under Fitness and Health | Posted By Jennifer Sullivan |

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US researchers said that Meditation may slow the worsening of AIDS in just a few weeks, perhaps by affecting the immune system.

The team at the University of California Los Angeles said that it’s cheap and pleasant way to help people from incurable and often fatal condition.

They tested a stress-lowering program called mindfulness meditation, defined as practicing an open and receptive awareness of the present moment, avoiding thinking of the past or worrying about the future.

The more often the volunteers meditated, the higher their CD4 T-cell counts — a standard measure of how well the immune system is fighting the AIDS virus. The CD4 counts were measured before and after the two-month program.

David Creswell said, “This study provides the first indication that mindfulness meditation stress-management training can have a direct impact on slowing HIV disease progression,”
He and his team tested 67 HIV-positive adults from the Los Angeles area. Out of 48, whom did some or all of the meditation. Most were likely to have highly stressful lives, Creswell said.

He added, “The average participant in the study was male, African American, homosexual, unemployed and not on ARV (antiretroviral) medication,”

Creswell said that they started eight weeks classes and all the people that were in this class really responded and just really enjoyed the program.

He added, “The mindfulness program is a group-based and low-cost treatment, and if this initial finding is replicated in larger samples, it’s possible that such training can be used as a powerful complementary treatment for HIV disease, alongside medications,”



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