Hot Research
-
Read more »There’s an iconic jaw-dropper of a study1 from the early sixties that makes a stunning point about the power of the mind over an allergic reaction – in this case, on the skin.
Drs. Ikemi and Nakagawa at Yokohama City University School of Medicine in Japan studied 13 boys known to be hypersensitive to the leaves of the Japanese wax tree, which delivers an allergic reaction very similar to poison ivy – itching, swelling, redness, and blisters.
The investigators touched their blind-folded student-subjects on one arm with innocuous leaves, telling the boys, who were in a relaxed trance state, they were the poisonous product of the wax tree. All 13 boys showed eruptive skin reactions of varying proportions.
-
Posted: February 23, 2021Categories: Hot Research
Read more »The databases for mind-body research on guided imagery and meditation just keep on growing, I’m happy to report. There’s a steady growth of well designed, randomized clinical trials that yield promising-to-robust results.
And – be still my heart! - there’s now enough of a cache of respectable research to generate systematic reviews, meta-analyses, scoping reviews, bubble maps, the works. This, people, is a significant step up.
-
Posted: December 14, 2020Categories: Hot Research
Read more »When we get to talking about the N.O.W. Tone Therapy System, one of the similarities people often draw is to Tibetan singing bowls — and in fact, sound therapy in one form or another has been around for thousands of years, with sound wave therapy specifically originating in the 1950s.
Tone therapy in particular, with its clear frequencies and vibrations, has been shown in various studies to offer a myriad of benefits:
-
Read more »Published in September of this year, a new ongoing study from the University of Leicester and the University of South Australia found that “night-owl” patients with Type 2 diabetes exercised a total of 56% less than their “early-bird” counterparts. They also regularly went to sleep and exercised later, and the intensity of that activity peaked at lower levels.
-
Posted: January 27, 2020Categories: Hot Research
Read more »Recent studies are clarifying and refining what works best for reducing the severity of posttraumatic stress symptoms in our Veterans, turning long-held assumptions upside down.
Two recent studies find that general meditation training (ie, practices that do not focus on specific traumas, but instead serve as all-round resilience and self-regulation training) can do a way better job at reducing symptoms than what for years was touted at the V.A. as preferred therapies: Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE) and Present-Centered Therapy (PCT).
-
Posted: August 26, 2019Categories: Hot Research
Read more »Researchers from Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, NC, conducted a randomized controlled pilot comparing the viability of two mind-body workplace stress reduction programs - one therapeutic yoga-based and the other mindfulness-based - in order to set the stage for larger cost-effectiveness trials. Additionally, 2 delivery venues of the mindfulness-based program were evaluated (online vs. in-person).
Group differences were examined over time on perceived stress and secondary measures to clarify which variables to include in future studies: sleep quality, mood, pain levels, work productivity, mindfulness, blood pressure, breathing rate, and heart rate variability. -
Read more »MD Anderson’s Department of Palliative, Rehabilitation and Integrative Medicine recently evaluated the impact of 4 different integrative, mind-body therapies on the symptom distress of cancer patients and their caregivers.
They looked at guided meditation, yoga, massage therapy, & acupuncture.
-
Posted: May 01, 2019Categories: Hot Research
Read more »A breakthrough German studyi in 2018 looked at 264 employees suffering from elevated stress levels and randomly assigned them to either a stress management program or a waitlist control group.
The stress management program consisted of 7 sessions of cognitive and mind-body emotional regulation techniques, in keeping with research showing that mindfulness, guided imagery, and meditation are efficacious at improving workplace health, employee well-being, and work performanceii.
-
Posted: April 05, 2019Categories: Hot Research
Read more »For nearly 25 years, ever since my son built me a Health Journeys website as a birthday present in 1995, I’ve been searching the databases for new research on guided imagery – usually on a weekly basis.
At first it was a real fool’s errand, because there was so little there.
-
Read more »A revealing pilot study by Australian researchers investigating what helps people suffering from social anxiety, shows the immediate and powerful impact guided imagery, as compared to a more verbal/mental approach.
The research compared 2 different interventions - Imagery Rescripting and Verbal Restructuring - comparing them to each other after one group session of each, and both to a no treatment/waitlist condition.
