Chemotherapy can induce cognitive impairment in the medium term. Mindfulness meditation tends to limit this effect.
Survival of cancer is not the end of the fight. Often, chemotherapy induces cognitive impairment. These disruptions affect the social and professional lives of people who have beaten cancer. However, oncologists are unarmed in the face of these side effects. Till today.
According to a pilot study published in the Journal of Cancer Survivorship, mindfulness meditation would limit the deleterious effects of chemotherapy.
“More and more people are surviving cancer thanks to the development of targeted and effective treatments. But many survivors suffer from the heavy and persistent side effects of these treatments ”, explains Shelley Johns, principal author of this work. This clinical trial is the first to assess the interest of meditation against what English speakers call the chemo brain.
71 people who survived cancer of the breast or colon-rectum were recruited for the research. Half received usual support. The other half received 2 hour mindfulness meditation classes for 8 weeks.
More attention
The first element is the impressive participation rate: more than 95% of the volunteers were observant throughout the study, which testifies to the real interest of such a proposal. And six months after stopping the program, they continued to practice meditation.
As for the results, the researchers have also observed a benefit. Compared to the controls, the recipients of the meditation experienced an improvement in their cognitive impairment. During the tasks presented to them, they were more attentive and made fewer mistakes.
“Mindfulness meditation allows cancer survivors to better manage cognitive impairment related to cancer, which is reported by about 35% of this population at the end of treatment,” says Shelley Johns. According to this psychologist, meditation improves cognition by focusing patients’ attention and improving the management of feelings and bodily sensations.
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