Does meditation help alleviate psychological distress?
How mind-body practices work to improve glycemic control isn’t clear, but one possible theory is that patients experience a decrease in psychological distress when they undertake such practices and in so doing, may be more compliant with their prescribed treatment regimen.
A few of the studies analyzed showed that mind-body work resulted in a significant decrease in serum cortisol, the stress hormone that could plausibly mediate the benefit of mind and body practices through reduced inflammation.
In addition, “people with diabetes live with what we call ‘diabetes distress,’ ” Dr. Watanabe explained.
“Management of blood glucose is very stressful. You have to watch what you eat, you have to measure your glucose, and for the average person, that gets stressful. And that stress just contributes to the difficulty of controlling blood glucose,” he noted.
The authors have reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.