Yoga & Meditation to cut health care cost!
New York: Do you want to reduce your healthcare cost? Then practice Yoga,
your healthcare cost will come down. Don’t think that this may be the advice
again by Indian Philosophers. This time this suggestion has come from the
researchers of America.
Strengthening your resilience with mindful meditation or yoga can help keep
the doctors away, thereby reducing your health care cost, says a new study.
Resilience can be enhanced with practice, starting with the relaxation
response -- a physiologic state of deep rest induced by practices such as
rhythmic breathing, mindfulness meditation, yoga, tai chi or prayer, the study
said.
The researchers found that people who graduated from a resiliency-boosting
programme used considerably less health care services in the year following the
course compared with the year before.
"We have shown in the past that it works in the laboratory and on the
level of individual physiology, and now we can see that when you make people
well, they do not want to use health care so much," said study leader
James Stahl from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Centre in New Hampshire, US.
For the study, the researchers tested the efficacy of eight-week course
developed by the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at
Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
To measure the effect of this programme called Relaxation Response Resiliency
Programme (3RP) on health care utilisation, the study compared health care used
by more than 4,400 3RP graduates to that of 13,150 patients who did not take
the 3RP course.
In the year after training, use of health care services by the resiliency
programme graduates dropped by 43 percent.
The researchers noted that it is possible to build resilience without any
formal training.
Resilience comes in part from making meaningful connections with other
people, such as through volunteer work, care-taking for aging relatives, and
other service work.
In addition, positive psychology research shows that having an optimistic
outlook and a sense of connectedness, meaning, and purpose in your life
contributes to resilience.
This includes learning how to identify and challenge day-to-day negative
attitudes that can undermine health.
"Just like fluorinating your water or vaccinating yourself, these are
ways of keeping you healthy with, from a public health perspective, minimal
investment," Stahl said.
The study was published in the journal PLOS One.
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