A recent research finds that patients with type 2 diabetes who engage in mind-body therapies such as yoga have considerably better blood sugar management.
While previous research has focused on yoga, this study, which was just published online in the Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine, also looked at the advantages of other mind-body activities for these individuals, such as qi gong and meditation.
According to one of the researchers, Richard Watanabe, PhD, the study is “the first to establish that there is a fairly consistent impact [on hemoglobin A1c, a diabetes marker] regardless of the modality you employ.”
“So I believe one of the significant lessons… is that any form of mind-body intervention seems to be beneficial,” says Watanabe, a professor of population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.
There are other possibilities, “and if you are a busy person and cannot go to yoga, you can learn about meditation and practice it anyplace.” So, once again, it’s a versatile tool for helping their patients with blood sugar management,” he explains.
“The extent of the effect these behaviors bring was the most surprise discovery,” says Fatimata Sanogo of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in a release. “We expected a benefit, but we never expected it to be this enormous.”
