SLIDE 4 9/27/2018 4
Discussion
What we found:
In this cross‐sectional study, mindfulness was associated with lower menopausal symptom burden. In women with higher stress, the magnitude of association between mindfulness and menopausal symptoms appeared more robust.
What is already known:
*Mindfulness is linked to positive mental health outcomes and health behaviors, better quality of life, improved insomnia, and better self care in non‐menopausal settings. *In the menopausal setting, mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR ) was shown to reduce menopausal symptom bother from 21.6% to 10.5% in 110 peri‐ and postmenopausal women. MBSR participants had significant improvements in QOL, sleep, anxiety and stress (p<.05).
What is new in this study:
*This study cohort was not trained in mindfulness. *Thus, trait (or dispositional mindfulness) appears to be protective against stress and symptoms in midlife women.
Discussion
What is the possible mechanism of action:
- 1. Mindfulness allows for attention training.
Since ‘trained’ attention can be deployed at will, more mindful women may be choosing to shift their attention to more pleasant aspects of life rather than their symptoms
- 2. Mindfulness allows for avoiding emotional reactivity and ruminative thinking
More mindful women may be softening the impact of their symptoms by avoiding negative emotional response to their symptoms, and by decreasing ruminations about their implications.
If you allow me to speculate a bit…
- 1. In our study, the association of higher mindfulness and lower menopausal
symptoms was most robust in the psychological domain. What is the possible explanation? *The underpinnings of psychological symptoms rest in threat focused attention and emotional reactivity. So the mindfulness approach appears to fit very well to impact such a change. *In the somato‐vegetative and urogenital domains, those women with higher emotional reactivity (or perceived stress) may have reaped greater benefit with mindfulness compared to those with less reactivity.
- 2. Total menopausal symptom experience (B) = Physical symptoms (A) + emotional
response to symptoms Mindfulness might be a tool to impact the emotional component of the overall experience, thereby decreasing the total suffering (burden)
Discussion
What are the limitations of this study:
- Tertiary care setting
- Homogenous population
- Cross‐sectional design
What are the conclusions:
- Higher mindfulness in midlife women appears to impact
women’s stress and menopausal symptoms positively.
- The current study adds to the wealth of data supporting the
role of mindfulness in various settings for impacting positive change in health and behaviors.
- There is a need to do more research with heterogeneous
sample of women using causal study designs.
Thanks for your attention! sood.richa@mayo.edu
