Brown, C

Innes, K

Rose, K

Selfe, T

Thompson-Heisterman, A

English

PubMed

K Innes

T Selfe

C Brown

K Rose

A Thompson-Heisterman

Springer - Publisher Connector

POSTER PRESENTATION Open Access
P02.131. Effects of meditation on perceived
stress, mood, sleep, memory and blood pressure
in cognitively impaired adults and their
caregivers: a pilot trial
K Innes1*, T Selfe1, C Brown2, K Rose3, A Thompson-Heisterman3
From International Research Congress on Integrative Medicine and Health 2012
Portland, Oregon, USA. 15-18 May 2012
Purpose
To investigate the effects of an 8-week meditation pro-
gram on perceived stress, sleep, mood, sympathetic activa-
tion and memory function in adults with cognitive
impairment and their caregivers.
Methods
Six community-dwelling adults with an established diag-
nosis of mild cognitive impairment or early stage
Alzheimer’s disease (4 women, 2 men), together with
their live-in caregivers (3 women, 3 men), were enrolled
in the study. Each participant dyad was trained in a
basic Kundalini yoga meditation and asked to complete
an 8-week meditation program (two 11-minute sessions
per day) with the aid of an instruction sheet and medita-
tion CD. Major outcomes included measures of stress
(Perceived Stress Scale), sleep (General Sleep Distur-
bance Questionnaire), mood (Profile of Mood States),
memory function (Memory Functioning Questionnaire),
and sympathetic activation (blood pressure, heart rate).
Participants were assessed at baseline and following
completion of the 8-week program. Changes in specific
measures over time (0-8 weeks) were analyzed using
repeated measures ANOVA.
Results
Ten participants (5 dyads) completed the study, including 6
women and 4 men. Compliance was very good overall, with
participants completing an average of 11.4±1.1 meditation
sessions/week. Although caregivers showed significantly
greater sleep disturbance and superior memory functioning
at baseline than did the cognitively impaired participants,
treatment effects did not vary by participant status; analyses
were thus pooled across participants. Participants demon-
strated improvement in all major outcome measures
following the 8-week intervention, including perceived
stress (p<0.001), mood (overall, p=0.07; depression, p=0.01;
anger, p=0.09), sleep quality (p<0.04), retrospective memory
function (p=0.04), and blood pressure (systolic, p=0.004;
diastolic, p=0.065).
Conclusion
Findings of this exploratory trial suggest that an 8-week
meditation program may offer an acceptable and effec-
tive intervention for reducing perceived stress and blood
pressure, and improving certain domains of sleep,
mood, and memory in adults with cognitive impairment
and their caregivers.
Author details
1West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA. 2JMU, Harrisonburg, USA.
3University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA.
Published: 12 June 2012
doi:10.1186/1472-6882-12-S1-P187
Cite this article as: Innes et al.: P02.131. Effects of meditation on
perceived stress, mood, sleep, memory and blood pressure in
cognitively impaired adults and their caregivers: a pilot trial. BMC
Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2012 12(Suppl 1):P187.
1West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Innes et al. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2012, 12(Suppl 1):P187
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/12/S1/P187
© 2012 Innes et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


P02.131. Effects of meditation on perceived stress, mood, sleep, memory and blood pressure in cognitively impaired adults and their caregivers: a pilot trial

Innes K

Selfe T

Brown C

Rose K

Thompson-Heisterman A

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P02.131. Effects of meditation on perceived stress, mood, sleep, memory and blood pressure in cognitively impaired adults and their caregivers: a pilot trial

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