SATURDAY, April 21 (HealthScout) -- Every day, Denise Fuller of Baltimore trades 2½ hours of sleep for meditation. The 40-year-old divorced mother of two grade-schoolers gets up at 4 a.m. to visualize, among other things, a hard-bristle brush scrubbing away her cancer, from her head to her feet.
　　"The meditation is so effective that when I first started 14 months ago my throat actually hurt [from the imaginary scrubbing]," says Fuller, a paralegal who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995. "I don't know what it's doing, but it's doing something. I feel grounded ... centered. Meditation keeps my mood even."

It also helps Fuller cope with her ongoing chemotherapy treatments, "which can make you so tired," she says, adding, "As long as I eat like I should and meditate, it all works together and helps me maintain my energy."

Although meditation has been used as adjunct therapy for cancer patients for some time, proponents had no documentation of its effectiveness. But now, Canadian researchers say they have shown that meditating can help cancer patients both psychologically and physically.

Their study, conducted at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre in Calgary, concludes that meditation can "substantially" reduce the levels of emotional distress and stress-related symptoms like headache, muscle tension and upset stomach that can accompany cancer.

The patients in the study learned a technique called "mindfulness meditation" -- a method that focuses on the moment, according to Michael Speca, the lead author of the study who is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Calgary.

"If you focus on the past or future, you miss out on the moment," he says. "For a cancer patient, that's an important insight."

The study, which appeared in a recent issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, involved 90 cancer patients, most with breast cancer. Some had early-stage disease, some late-stage, and an equal number of each was assigned randomly to one of two groups. Those in the first group attended 90-minute meditation classes once a week for seven weeks, and were encouraged to continue with the meditation for a minimum of 30 minutes at home.

Those in the second group were told about the classes, but had to wait seven weeks before participating.

A drop in anger, fatigue, despair

At the end of the first seven weeks, volunteers in both groups completed two questionnaires about mood and sense of distress. Those who attended the meditation classes experienced a 65 percent reduction in feelings of anger, fatigue, anxiety and depression, and a 31 percent reduction in stress-related symptoms like headaches, digestive problems and racing heart, compared to the volunteers who did not attend class.

"There haven't even been that many studies on the effects of meditation," Speca says, "and those that have been conducted measured responses before and after. But this isn't as good as measuring them against a control group. To my knowledge, ours is the first randomized controlled study. It shows us that the changes (in the meditation group) aren't due just to the passage of time."

All cancer patients in Canada are entitled to free psychological services, Speca says, "and we wanted to show that the cost of caring for cancer patients can be less when they learn meditation."

Other studies have shown that meditation also benefits patients with health problems ranging from psoriasis and anxiety disorders to chronic pain and fibromyalgia, Speca adds.

Holly Hall, a family therapist at the Wellness Community Cancer Center in San Diego, has taught meditation classes to cancer patients for several years, and she's a firm believer in the practice.

"There is other research to show that meditation decreases stress in the body, and increases the strength of the immune system," she says. "This is important for cancer patients because when you're fighting cancer and going through chemotherapy, your body is already compromised. The people who come to our classes say they sleep better and don't worry so much."

Meditation benefits caregivers, too

Meditation classes at the Wellness Center are also open to caregivers and family members because "it is very stressful to be a support person for someone with cancer," Hall says.

Douglas Chay, an oncology clinical social worker in Baltimore, is another advocate of meditation for cancer patients.

Meditation "makes a lot of sense in terms of my practice," Chay says. "A patient's anxiety is so heightened when they learn they have cancer that the decision process is impaired. But they have to make so many decisions, so anything to reduce the anxiety is useful."

Empowerment is the main benefit cancer patients receive from meditation, according to Bejai Higgins, a spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society. The reason: Feeling empowered is one way to eliminate the stress that causes anxiety and a host of accompanying physical symptoms.

"People feels so helpless when they learn they have cancer, and this gives them a sense of control," she says.

The cancer society lists meditation as an effective adjunct therapy for cancer -- one that should be used alongside conventional therapies like chemotherapy and radiation.

　　From HealthScout