Focused Awareness Meditation: A Holistic Alternative Toward Diabetes Management

By Julio L. Matta, MPA, MBA

The Synergy Meditation Center At St. Charles

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Focused Awareness Meditation: A Holistic Alternative Toward Diabetes Management

When studying meditation it is important to also become educated on the dangers of stress and the affect of stress to the body, mind, emotions, and ability to focus. One such stress-related illness is type 2 diabetes. Continuously conducting research on the benefits that comes with a daily routine of meditation is important.

Diabetes is one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. Medical research on this matter can be found from Harvard Medical, John Hopkins Medical, University of Calgary, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to name a few, and the number of people that suffer from type 2 diabetes in the U.S. is staggering.

The reports found that as of 2015, 30.3 million Americans – 9.4% of the U.S. population – have diabetes. Another 84.1 million have prediabetes, a condition that if not treated often leads to type 2 diabetes within five years. In 2017 more than 100 million U.S. adults are now living with diabetes or prediabetes according to the CDC.

Diabetes is associated with significant psychological distress. It is therefore important to ensure the physical, and emotional, as well as the psychosocial wellbeing of the individual living with diabetes.

Meditation-based strategies have been evaluated for their complementary role in several chronic disorders including depression, anxiety, obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The practice of focused awareness meditation is associated with reducing the symptoms of stress and negative emotions and improvements in patient attitude, health-related behavior and coping skills. There is increased parasympathetic activity with reduction in sympathetic vascular tone, stress hormones and inflammatory markers.

Additionally, studies show the role of focused awareness meditation reduction in diabetic individuals, and also demonstrated modest improvements in body weight, glycemic control and blood pressure. The research also shows that meditation as an intervention can lead to improvements across all domains of holistic care – biological, psychological and social.

You can find information about meditation in books, CD’s, and on YouTube, but if at all possible, attend a meditation course in a class environment. You will learn the basics of dealing with stress through the use of meditation practices, group support, and brief lectures. This type of class helps when barriers, such as difficulty staying focused arise or when questions about what is “normal” to experience while meditating comes up.

The groundwork towards happiness and success is good health. It’s your time to focus on your health because it is never too late to focus on wellness.