Mindfulness Helps Reduce Gambling

Recent research investigated whether mindfulness might be a useful intervention to help people stop gambling. Compared to a waitlist control group, those in a mindfulness enhanced cognitive behavioral program showed significantly reduced gambling and gambling urges. At a 3-month follow-up, both groups still showed improvements, and there was a decrease in the number of participants meeting criteria for pathological gambling.

Further, those participants who reported some mindfulness practice even after the intervention ended showed significantly better outcomes than participants who reported no mindfulness practice after the completion of the program. This may indicate the important of practice, as well as the direct role of mindfulness in results.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Mindfulness Helps Reduce Emotional Eating

Very few of us only eat when we’re hungry and then stop eating once we’re full. We also have an emotional relationship to food. Some of us eat as a response to stress and anxiety, some of us don’t eat as a response to stress and anxiety. Some of us try to restrict our food consumption to lose weight but then binge eat when we feel so deprived and starved. These kinds for relationships with food aren’t always so healthy for our bodies (have you ever heard anyone say “Oh wow I’m feeling so stressed, please pass me that bowl of sautéed broccoli and quinoa?”), and using food generally doesn’t resolve our emotional distress.

A recent review article examined 14 different published studies that all used mindfulness as an intervention for binge eating, emotional eating, or weight change. Results indicate that mindfulness interventions successfully reduce binge eating and emotional eating, but the jury’s still out for effectiveness in weight loss. The mechanism through which mindfulness helps us have a more emotionally healthy relationship with food was not discussed at length in the paper. One hypothesis is that mindfulness gives us a better strategy for dealing with our negative emotions and thus reduces our need to use food as a coping strategy. This could be similar to findings in studies on mindfulness and alcohol consumption.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Romantic Relationships and Mindfulness: Let’s Have a Talk

Having difficult conversations with our romantic partners can be a necessary yet stressful experience. Past research has found that people who tend to feel less secure about their relationships experience even more anxiety when dealing with conflict with their romantic partner. Other research has found that mindfulness is associated both with better stress regulation and with feelings of more secure relationships.

A recent study investigated the relationship between mindfulness, secure attachment, and stress during a difficult conversation with a romantic partner. Participants (all heterosexual couples) filled out questionnaires measuring mindfulness and attachment (how secure or insecure they feel in their relationships). Then they came into the lab one week later, where they completed some activities including a conflict discussion task with their partner. Results indicated that more mindful participants had lower levels of cortisol (a stress hormone) during their conflict discussion and were better able to regulate their negative emotion after the discussion. Further, this relationship was largely explained through the fact that mindfulness is associated with more secure attachment.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

How Mindfulness Changes the Brain

Much recent research has discovered that practicing mindfulness meditation is associated with greater psychological wellbeing. The biological mechanism through which this happens is under current investigation. In a recent study, participants took a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course. Both before the course and after, participants had their brains scanned and they filled out questionnaires measuring their psychological wellbeing. Results indicated that participants reported greater psychological wellbeing after the course, and the brain scans revealed that participants also experienced a growth and strengthening of neural connections in certain areas of the brainstem. Further, there was a positive correlation between participants’ psychological wellbeing scores and their increased neural connectivity.

The brainstem is a very old part of the brain, and is central for regulating some of our most basic functions, like sleep, fear, arousal, and eating. The first region of the brainstem whose growth was associated with greater psychological wellbeing is one that is concentrated in serotinergic neurons (neurons that release serotonin). Serotonin has been found to effect sleep, mood, appetite, and conditioned fear, and drugs that change the levels of serotonin in the brain are currently used as treatment for many mood and anxiety disorders.

The second brain region whose growth was most correlated with increases in psychological wellbeing is one responsible for the synthesis and release of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. One of norepinephrine’s major roles is to regulate our body’s stress response. This part of the brain is also a focal area of anti-depressant drugs.

Overall, this study reveals that mindfulness causes physical changes in the brain, which in turn help give us the ability to cope with life’s challenges, and help us experience less anxiety and depression and greater happiness.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Hold on to your chromosomes!

Every time our body makes a new cell, we have to make a new copy of our DNA for that cell. With each copy made, we lose some of the nucleotides at the end. Though this slow damage to our chromosomes is part of our body’s natural aging process, it is counteracted by telomerase, which is an enzyme that works hard to add a nice little protective cap (a telomere) to the ends of our chromosomes.

Research has discovered, however, that there are other factors that can speed up or slow down this chromosome damage. For example, stress is one factor that speeds up the wear and tear. Mindfulness and meditation, on the other hand have been found to protect our telomeres and chromosomes. A recent randomized, controlled study found that mindfulnessmeditation leads to increased telomerase activity in blood cells. So cancel your facelift appointment – mindfulness meditation may be a key to successful aging!

Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Burnout and Mindfulness

Going to work day after day is a centerpiece of most American adult lives. How to stay engaged, refreshed, and find meaning in our work is an important question for workers, and how to keep employees engaged and working effectively is an important question for employers.

A recent study investigated the relationship between burnout, mindfulness, social support, and job satisfaction. The study was conducted on a sample of employees working in a financial corporate environment in Johannesburg, South Africa. Participants completed questionnaires measuring burnout, mindfulness, social support and job satisfaction. Results indicated that all three constructs (mindfulness, social support and job satisfaction) were negatively associated with burnout. Upon further analysis of the data, researchers discovered that each construct was predictive of less burnout independent of the others. The strongest predictor was job satisfaction, followed by mindfulness, and then by social support.

Keryn Bteriterman-Loader

Reducing Physical Pain through Mindfulness

When we experience physical pain, we naturally think of that pain as existing solely in that hurting part of our body. If we have back pain, the problem is in our back. If we have stomach pain, the problem is our stomach. Though true in many ways, our experience of pain is slightly more complex. It is the nerves in our back or stomach that send a signal to our brains and then our brains interpret that signal as pain. Because of this intermediary step in our brains, it is possible for us to exert some influence over how much pain we experience by influencing the way our mind interprets those pain signals from other parts of our body.

A recent study examined how mindfulness might impact our subjective experience of pain. The researchers recruited 200 participants suffering from chronic pain and had them complete measures of mindfulness, experience of pain, emotional intelligence (the ability to recognize, regulate, and cope with one’s emotions), and pain management self-efficacy (our belief and confidence in our ability to cope with our pain). What they found was that those who were more mindful reported experiencing less physical pain, and scored higher on the measures of emotional intelligence and pain management self-efficacy. Upon further analysis, they found that it was the increased emotional intelligence and pain management self-efficacy that led to the relationship between mindfulness and experience of pain. In other words, mindfulness helps us feel more secure about being able to handle our pain and helps us better recognize and regulate our emotions. These two things, in turn, help to reduce our actual experience of physical pain. Researchers note that this relationship between mindfulness and subjective experience of pain could be a purely psychological one, or perhaps this increased capacity to handle or emotions, and belief in our ability to handle pain could prompt us to actually change our behavior in ways that help to minimize the pain.

Keryn Breiterman-Loader