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Meditation found helpful in older adults with sleep trouble. When you’re having trouble sleeping, most doctors will recommend changing your habits to better set the tone for bed. New findings out this week have found that mindfulness meditation may also help with sleepless nights. “Scientists used 49 people in Los Angeles 55 and older who had expressed moderate sleep complaints. They were split into two groups, one of which was taught to meditate and the other given behavioral sleep education. The participants used a meditation program from UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, taught by a teacher with more than 20 years of experience. The second group spent as much time in their education program. The meditators slept better and had better results in related issues such as depression, based on results of a standard measure of sleep quality. But the researchers said more work was needed to determine whether meditation is a long-term solution to sleep problems.” While the research looked at education compared to meditation, the team points out that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. They’d like to repeat the research to see how combining these two approaches might help older adults, a population well known to have frequent sleep problems.
