Meditation and Medicine: Where do we stand today?

Shuvendu Sen
12 November 2013, 05:11 PM IST

I come from a land where every god loves the meditative pose. Where the word meditation itself, from the melting mountain top to the fungal ocean bottom devours every soul it sets its eyes upon.

Expressions like peace, serenity, fulfillment…even eternity spins out effortlessly from this giant of a word. From Sankaracharya to Budhha, meditation has been one voiceless wealth we have prided or envied. A lone splendor that looks down on earth as one useless pack of existence.

But what about medicine and meditation? Do we have the same unhindered monopoly? Shall we dare to challenge its invincibility? To put it simply, should we allow its entry into our body the way it eases into our mind?

Like everything else, we seem to be divided. Western medicine (a dangerous terminology in today's virtual world) has to drag everything under the microscope to be seen and felt… to be eventually called a cure. Its oriental partner warns that some 'things' are too big to be tamed and filmed in a slide. In other words, it's the good old, quintessential fight between quantitative gain and qualitative virtues.

Time for some objective information. In what exact areas have meditation excelled in medicine? To make things relevant and yet simplistic we will deal with cancer and meditation. More importantly, without trying to sound fundamentalist, we will approach them through trials, and studies.

An all-important review article from University of Texas, M.D Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, finds meditation to be beneficial in the alleviation of cognitive impairment of cancer patients. According to the paper, a large number of recent studies investigating the effects of meditation programs have found behavioral and corresponding neurophysiological modulations to be particularly effective in alleviating cancer-related cognitive impairment. Further, such programs have been shown to alleviate stress, fatigue, nausea and pain, and improve mood and sleep quality.

So, where is the temptation? The temptation lies in the fact that although there are pharmacotherapies available for such side effects of both the disease and its management, none of them are exact angels in the sky. All medications have their sweet adverse effects which become deepened in a body already hacked by cancer. And this is exactly where such non-invasive methods become priceless options.

Because symptoms often are multifactorial, supportive care often requires multiple integrated interventions. As a matter of fact, substitution or supplementation with complementary therapies does result in the reduction of drug-induced adverse effects.

So far so good. But the buck must stop here. For herein lies a potential danger. While growing studies and trials are showing the good effects of meditation on relieving stress and impaired cognition, very little has been studied or have been shown to be of any scientific benefit on any major diseases per se.

And these are the exact cracks where faith practices become fatal choices. To put it bluntly, no amount of meditation will stop a rampant cancer head bent to devour. No amount of meditation will unplug a clotted artery destined to freeze the heart. Far too many times, we see such fearful fallibilities. It is this fundamentalist attitude that we fear. An inclination for profundity that has little bearing on a granular level.

In other words, let complementary medicine, complement. And not take the center stage. Not yet!