Practising yoga, meditation can result in less doctor visits
Researchers analyzed data on more than 4,400 patients who were referred by their health-care providers to the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where they received what’s known as relaxation response training.
Compared with the year before the training, in the year afterward, these people had an average 43-per-cent reduction in their use of health services. Over the same period, health services use was little changed for another group of 13,000 similar patients who didn’t receive relaxation response training.
Bei-Hung Chang, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester ... “One of the obstacles in integrating mind and body techniques into the health-care system is the lack of empirical evidence from rigorous studies,” Chang said. “The findings from this study … could serve to overcome this obstacle and hopefully convince those patients and clinicians who are looking for empirical evidence to endorse these techniques.”