Health
According to new research, meditation and yoga can relieve symptoms in adolescents and young adults who suffer from asthma and live in the city.
A team of scientists and the University of Cincinnati found that young people from the city who have been diagnosed with asthma are more difficult to recover if they do not engage in some spiritual practices. However, they often resort to traditional and non-traditional therapies, prayers and relaxation to relieve symptoms.
The results of new studies will help doctors consider alternative ways to combat the disease and will be able to suggest how symptoms can be controlled in the event of a chronic illness.
The research was conducted by Sian Cotton, a professor at the Family Health Care Unit. Scientists asked young people with asthma and living in the city to share how they are coping with the disease and what they are doing to control symptoms and feel psychologically it's fine.
The analysis showed that from a psychological point of view, many people experience anxiety and depression due to illness, while their quality of life also suffers. Scientists have also identified a link between spiritual practices and health, taking into account age, gender, ethnicity, and the severity of the disease.
“We assume that religious rituals or spiritual practices, as well as unrelated methods for dealing with symptoms, have different effects. These results are very similar to those of early studies that involved adults. Spiritual practices are best able to help adolescents and young people cope with asthma symptoms,” Cotton said.
In the second study, a group of the same young people answered a series of questions, analyzing 10 methods of traditional and alternative medicine that help fight the disease. Such methods included prayer, guided mental images, relaxation, meditation, yoga, massage, herbs, vitamins, and others, as well as changes in eating habits.
“As a result, we saw that a group of young people with chronic asthma used alternative medicine to fight the disease, and this helped them a lot,” Cotton said. “Doctors patients with asthma should be given both traditional and non-traditional treatments to help them get rid of symptoms.”
Most likely, these studies can help not only patients suffering from asthma, but also from other chronic diseases. Spiritual practices help to achieve physical, mental, emotional and mental health, as well as improve the quality of life.