Coping With Health Problems - Helping Yourself and Your Doctor
People have to cope with all types of problems during their lives; coping with health problems is just one the range that are sent to try us. For all of them, though, mental strength, focus and positive attitude can play a helpful role.
You will help your doctor to help you if you supply a good attitude towards both him and your condition. The more relaxed and balanced you can be, the broader and more incisive your focus, then the more chance there is that the doctors efforts will pay dividends.
One means of helping you to keep things in perspective, and to inject a positive attitude in yourself, is through meditation. Meditation may, in some circumstances, help you to cope with your own health problems.
Improving Health Through Meditation
There are a number of health conditions that may benefit from meditation and its positive effects. For example, you can practise meditation to improve your life through such things as as: eliminating drug addition, prolonging your life expectancy, and improving the condition of several illnesses.
Meditation can help you achieve a state of heightened mental awareness which enables you to slow down your body processes, and achieve a positive state of relaxation. Prolonging life expectancy is believed to be one of the effects of the slowdown in body processes.
Pain management also benefits from the healing power of meditation. I must say I did not appreciate that fully in my 20's, though I did try to relax in a meditative way. Stress induced anxiety increases perception of pain and, in turn, more pain triggers increased anxiety. This can be a vicious cycle that sparks off a display of negative and self destructive reactions. Employing mediation techniques that teach the patient how to better resist the negative effects of physical pain, through mental abilities, can interrupt this vicious circle. Improving your relaxation helps diminish pain, but it doesn’t eliminate it, so use this technique combined with modern treatments.
People often adopt meditation in order to reduce stress factors. It is, indeed, an efficient solution to improving your capacity to resist the negative effects of outside pressures. The source of these pressures may come from various aspects of life, such as family, work, illness. Scientific research has shown that several hormones and other biochemical compounds found in our blood, which are good indicators of stress, do decrease during meditation. Stress factors often manifest themselves as muscular tensions and psychological problems such as depression and anxiety, so by using meditation techniques you should be able to minimize their effects on your mind and body.
Reducing the risk of strokes and heart attacks is also one of the benefits of meditation. You can lower you blood pressure as a result of meditation practices, thus lowering the chances of heart problems. I was quite surprised when I first tried this a few years ago; I found I could lower my diastolic reading by well over ten points through just a short, relaxed, meditation. I tried the method after my son, Sam, told me he controlled his blood sugar level by meditation. he normally has to watch his diet very closely because of a blood sugar problem, but while touring India a couple of years ago, it was not always easy to get the right food.
"Don't worry Dad, I'll just control my blood sugar through meditation."
Infertility is another issue that may be aided by meditation practices. There are several psychological additions to infertility, such as depression and low self-esteem, and a reduction of these negative factors becomes more likely through meditation. Chances of pregnancy increase when the patients become more relaxed and in tune with their inner selves. Fewer respiratory crises are observed with patients suffering from chronic breathing illnesses, such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Breathing techniques combined with effective meditation improve psychological and physiological responses.
Other health problems related to Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) or Premenstrual Tension (PMT), may find solutions in meditation practices. You can reduce physical tensions and pain, such as headaches. Meditating can offer you a break from the every day problems, offering you a chance to recover and face outside difficulties with ease. Increased stress can worsen symptoms of PMS, aggravating muscle aches and fatigue. A general improvement of your body’s response to stressful factors will lessen PMS’s negative effects, relaxing your mind and body.
Meditation can be a powerful adjuvant in all the above-mentioned conditions. Of course, it is not a cure for some of them and medical treatment should always be considered first. Meditation helps support medical treatments by helping you relax and accentuate more positive aspects of your life, while diminishing the negative effects of distressful factors and illnesses.
