A two-month program combining gentle yoga with meditation techniques, known as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, seemed to ease tenderness, pain and stiffness among patients with rheumatoid arthritis in a new study.

I think these findings are pretty consistent with other studies of mindfulness and chronic conditions, said Mary Jo Kreitzer, who was not involved in the research.

Although it was small, and relatively brief, the studys findings were impressive, said Kreitzer, the founder and director of the University of Minnesota Center for Spirituality and Healing.

I would say more research is needed to really understand how the mechanisms work, Kreitzer told Reuters Health, so this trial is incredibly encouraging, but its not definitive.

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a program developed decades ago at the University of Massachusetts to help seriously ill patients cope with pain, such as from advanced cancer or AIDS. But in recent years that program has been adapted and offered more widely to people seeking relief from pain and stress of many kinds.

Mindfulness training involves the cultivation of nonjudgemental attention to unwanted thoughts, feelings and bodily experiences via meditation and may help ameliorate both psychological and physical symptoms of chronic disease, write the study authors in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

Previous research has found mixed success when MBSR is used by sufferers of various conditions. For instance, in one trial among patients with fibromyalgia a widespread pain syndrome of unknown cause MBSR had little effect.

But Francesca Fogarty at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, who led the new study, and her coauthors note that past research has found MBSR improves the psychological wellbeing of rheumatoid arthritis patients.

They wanted to see if mindfulness techniques had any impact on the disease process itself.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic disease caused by the immune system attacking tissue in the joints, especially in the hands and feet, and sometimes causes problems in other parts of the body, such as the eyes, skin, lungs and blood vessels.

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Mindfulness program may improve some rheumatoid arthritis symptoms