June 14, 2017 – Meditation Benefits

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:06 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead: Does it matter if men and women process meditation differently? Elizabeth Tracey reports

College aged women were able to reduce so-called negative affect – things like anxiety and depression -more with meditation than college men were, a recent study found. Meera Goyal, an internal medicine expert and meditation researcher at Johns Hopkins, says his own survey of the research on meditation did not discern such a difference.

Goyal: These studies did not really differentiate between men and women I think we were seeing effects across the board. I think we can say that there is pretty good evidence that mindfulness programs reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression and pain, which are ubiquitous in society and in any clinical population. There’s certainly a lot more research that needs to be done but we have pretty good evidence I think to comfortably recommend this as a therapy or as an adjunct to therapy for most people. :30

Goyal notes that meditation is simple to learn and has a low risk of harm, so it’s well worth beginning a practice. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.