NEW YORK (HealthDay News)—A meditation technique called mindful breathing can help cancer patients manage their pain and anxiety, a new study found.
Cancer patients who performed 20 minutes of conscious breathing experienced greater pain reduction than those who were not taught this technique.
“Twenty-minute conscious breathing effectively and rapidly reduces the intensity of pain, discomfort and anxiety in cancer patients,” wrote the research team led by Dr. Tan Seng Beng, palliative medicine consultant at the Medical Center Subang Jaya in Selangor, Malaysia.
“This brief, accessible intervention offers a complementary approach to traditional pharmacological strategies,” the team said.
Mindful breathing requires people to focus their attention on their breathing as they inhale and exhale, the researchers noted.
However, previous research on the possible pain relief of mindful breathing has focused on short meditation sessions lasting only 5 to 10 minutes, the researchers noted.
For this study, researchers randomly assigned 40 cancer patients to one of two groups.
In one group, patients were taught how to do conscious breathing in a 20-minute session. In the other, doctors listened for 20 minutes as patients talked about their cancer experience.
Pain rating scales showed that all patients who performed conscious breathing experienced a reduction in their cancer pain, compared to the control group.
The new study appears in the August 20 issue of the journal “BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care.”
“The 100 percent response rate and absence of adverse events underscore the feasibility and safety of the 20-minute conscious breathing intervention,” the researchers noted in a journal news release. “The intervention can be learned quickly and applied with beneficial effect.”
Such meditation practices could complement traditional pain relief with opioid medications and other treatments, the researchers said.
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