Another drink? Nah man, I'm good with just some breathing

Colleges and universities across the country spend a lot of time and resources addressing this common problem: binge drinking. Binge drinking can hinder students’ learning and academic achievement. Further alarming is how binge drinking leads to bodily injury, sexual assault, and even death. A complex problem with many roots, one team of researchers investigated the impact of a 4-week mindfulness intervention on students’ level of binge drinking.

Results indicated that after the intervention, students in the mindfulness intervention group reported significantly less binge drinking and fewer negative consequences of drinking. Further, they had increased levels of self-efficacy and dispositional mindfulness than the control group.

The authors of the study didn’t fully explore why the mindfulness intervention was successful, so here's a bit of back story based on other research and a plethora of anecdotal evidence. Binge drinking in college students (as well as adults) is often a reaction to difficult emotions - stress, overwhelm, uncertainty about belonging, etc. So one potential mechanism of why the intervention worked would be mindfulness’ strength as an emotion regulation skill. All of us to one degree or another try to soothe ourselves or escape from the difficulty of our current experience in one way or another - chocolate cake, TV, alcohol. Being mindful of our feelings, needs, and behaviors, we can begin to question whether having that next drink, or eating that entire cake is really going to help us feel better. And learning more skillful ways to soothe ourselves (i.e. breath and body practices, cognitive reframing, self-compassion, social connection), then we can be more efficacious in supporting ourselves through the often difficult situations we face in our lives.


Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Does virtual mindfulness translate to real mindfulness?

Lots of studies investigate the benefits of mindfulness and how it helps us live happier, healthier lives. So the question is, how can we get it? Up till now, most mindfulness practices were taught in person, but a new study investigated whether mindfulness could be taught online, and if learned online, will it still have the same benefits?

This particular study focused on a more clinical population of participants who were depressed or at risk for depression. Participants went through an 8 session web-based version of MBCT (Mindful Mood Balance, or MMB). After the 8 weeks, participants showed a reduction in depressive symptoms. Though technology may never replicate the presence of a human, this study shows promising results for the efficacy of this online program.


Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Aerobic exercise increases mindfulness

So by this point you probably know that mindfulness is good for you. It reduces depression and anxiety, prevents diseases, helps you do better at work or school, and so the list goes on. But how do we actually become more mindful? Do we have to sit down and meditate every day or are there other strategies? Some researchers in Germany investigated this question. Specifically, they looked to see if regular aerobic exercise could do the trick.

Participants were randomly split into three groups: an aerobic exercise group, a relaxation training group, and a waitlist control group (i.e. received no intervention, but were offered one of the interventions after the experiment ended). All participants’ level of mindfulness was measured before and after the 12-week long intervention. Findings showed that indeed, regular aerobic exercise was correlated with an increase in dispositional mindfulness. This was especially powerful for those participants who were most inactive before the experiment.

The researchers also measured changes in mental and physical wellbeing. They found that increases in mindfulness were associated with increases in mental wellbeing, however, were not correlated with changes in physical wellbeing. So even if that new exercise regimen isn’t really helping you keep off those pounds, it may still be working out your mind. So stick with it!


Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Conversing with strangers - noticing if it's fun...or not

Mindfulness of often thought of as a seated, contemplative practice, however it is also a way of engaging with the world. This lifestyle mindfulness, so to say, involves paying close attention to the world around us, so that we notice new things and are attuned to variation and change. A recent study conducted by researchers at Harvard investigated how this sort of mindfulness relates to our relationships. In particular they were interested in synchronicities, or the way people tend to unconsciously coordinate their behavior in conversations.

In a fun experiment, participants were split into a mindful treatment group and a control group, and within each group were paired off to have conversations with each other. Participants were then separated, completed another task, and then were allowed to return to resume their conversations. Results showed that people in the control group returned to their partners at a relatively uniform amount of time, while those in the mindfulness group showed much more variation in how long they took to return.

Researchers interpreted this to mean that mindfulness increased peoples awareness of whether they were actually enjoying the conversation or not, with those who returned faster reporting that they liked their partner more compared to those who were slower to return. In the control group, however, all participants returned about at the same time.

At the end of the experiment, those high in mindfulness enjoyed their conversation more and felt more comfortable with their partners. Additionally, partners in the mindfulness group showed more closely matching heart rates than partners in the control group.



Keryn Breiterman-Loader

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