Why Mindfulness for the VA?

Mindfulness at VA can help in three ways. Help veterans. with the problems they have, necessarily supplier. the healthcare provider, i.e. the doctor, from themselves because burnout rates are very high. the interaction of the two in the clinical setting, with compassion fatigue as engaged or attuned work with clinicians. It is beneficial for everyone. from the conflict (and Afghanistan) from the physiological arousal, of course, from the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, from fight or flight. or simply focus on your breathing to make a different decision. And of course this is something we can see. This is our experience as

mindfulness

teachers, and this is something our students feel immediately.

They come to our classes and say, "Something triggered me and I didn't react." And that's huge. An Iraqi combat veteran... he was at the grocery store and he had a diagnosis of PTSD and he had been taking the MBSR

mindfulness

series. And he was busy, at 5:00 p.m., and the cars are coming from unexpected places, and he's getting more and more anxious. He finally he is in line to leave. Three people in a line, and the woman in the checkout line only gets one item and, of course, the story he begins to tell himself: he's in the wrong place.

Why it takes so long? She has a baby. She is talking to the inspector. She goes on and on, and he gets more and more anxious, and all he can do is stay there, just breathe and follow his breathing. He then hands the baby to the lady, and the lady bounces the baby. He finally gets there and, instead of yelling at the lady, she tells him, "Pretty baby." She says, "Oh, you think so?" "Thank you. That's my son. "You know, my husband was killed in Iraq last year, "and I had to go back to work to support our family. "And, you know, my mom just brings him here," just a couple of times a day". day" and, you know, she only buys one thing, so that I can see my son.

The ability to observe the sensations in the body and the thoughts that go through the mind helps veterinarians find their way back to be at peace". inside his body again. There is an emerging body of evidence, expanding rapidly every day, and modalities of mindfulness for health. However, in my opinion, it makes sense to think about them in three general areas. These are mood symptoms such as depression and anxiety. Research indicates that the effect size of mindfulness for symptom reduction is in the average range, from medium to large. I don't see myself as sad about depression. Smile more than before.

The second type of research column for me is the physiological or... the type of biological measurements. So looking at mindfulness and seeing what's happening in the body, not just things like cortisol and stress hormone reduction. But now we are entering new areas that show very interesting work in epigenetics. In just six to eight weeks, up to 60 genes that regulate inflammatory processes in the body were turned on or off in the right direction. So when people have pain, tiredness, and fatigue, we are teaching a behavioral approach that may have epigenetic implications for the way their genome is expressed, and this has profound implications for their own healthcare.

Also in column two, some of the evidence connecting mindfulness to biomarker changes in the body has to do with the impact of mindfulness on cellular aging. And the way they look at this is by looking at telomeres. On the chromosome, there are telomeres like little caps and they shorten over time and with stress. And there is preliminary, but still very fascinating, evidence to suggest that a mindfulness practice can help change the trajectory of cellular aging. The third type of research area is the idea of ​​neuroplasticity. That, when the brain activates, it connects. We are teaching practices not only for mindfulness, but also for compassion and kindness, which can help rewire the brain in as little as eight weeks.

We can see through brain images the differences in people's subcortical structures and how neural pathways are connected. This has long-term implications for things like mood regulation. Additionally, we are exploring veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with traumatic brain injuries and intractable post-traumatic headaches, to see if meditation can not only give them some relief from their chronic pain, their headache, but also make some pre and post brain relief. Images to see if we are able to alter this intractable post-traumatic headache with a meditation intervention. We're in an interesting time in healthcare delivery, I think in the country, but certainly in the VA.

Very importantly, we are shifting the locus of control from the white-coated healthcare provider to the veteran. We are teaching veterans how to handle the everyday problems that arise in their lives. They are taking these tools and using them every day of their lives. Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org