Three Things Meditation Can Do for Breast Cancer Survivors

You’ve no doubt heard that meditation can benefit your overall health, but did you know that there are some very specific benefits of meditation for breast cancer survivors?  This post covers research about three common problems that breast cancer survivors face and how meditation can help alleviate those problems.  The three problems that I am going to touch on are anxiety/depression, sleep disturbances, and hot flashes.

Let’s begin with how investigators commonly teach and utilize meditation in research studies.  One of the methods they use to teach meditation is called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction or MBSR.  This program was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at University of Massachusetts and has been widely used as a meditation training program across the US.  Using it provides a similar structure to the meditation instruction that participants get across studies.  But it is certainly not the only way to learn meditation.

MBSR teaches participants to focus on the present moment by bringing complete awareness to the present situation or moment in a non-judgmental and accepting way.  Some of the studies I will discuss used MBSR or something very similar as the meditation intervention.

The effects of meditation have been most widely studied in improving symptoms of anxiety and depression.  Here are three interesting breast cancer specific studies.

The first study randomized 172 women with early stage breast cancer to either MBSR for 8 weeks, nutritional counseling, or usual care.  They found significant improvements in measures of quality of life and coping outcomes in those who meditated.  In addition, there were significant improvements at 4 months in meaningfulness, depression, paranoid ideation, hostility, anxiety, unhappiness, and emotional control.  All from an 8-week meditation course.

Another study done at UCLA looked at the usefulness of meditation in early stage breast cancer patients who were younger than 50 years old.  These 71 patients were randomized to 6 weeks of Mindfulness Awareness Practices or to a control group that was put on a waiting list for the intervention (often called a wait list control).  In this study there was a significant reduction in perceived stress and a marginal reduction in depressive symptoms.  These investigators also measured an important factor that increases the risk of breast cancer recurrence.  That factor is inflammation.  In the group that was taught mindfulness, blood tests showed less pro-inflammatory gene expression and lower measures of inflammatory markers.  This intervention also improved sleep and menopausal symptoms, which are the other two problems we’ll get to in a moment.

The final study I am going to mention was done in the UK and involved 229 women with stage 0 to III breast cancer who were randomized to MBSR or standard care after they completed surgery, chemo, and radiation.  This study revealed statistically significant improvements after MBSR in overall mood, anxiety, depression, anger, vigor, fatigue and confusion, breast- and endocrine-related quality of life, emotional, physical, social, and role functional wellbeing, and general well-being.

So meditation definitely helps breast cancer survivors with symptoms related to anxiety and depression.  Now let’s move on to sleep.

It is estimated that between 30 and 50% of breast cancer survivors have sleep problems that are significant enough to impact their quality of life and effect their physical and emotional well-being.  These sleep disturbances can continue for years after diagnosis.  It’s a big problem.  There was a Danish study involving 338 women with stage I-III breast cancer who were randomized to MBSR or usual treatment.  In this case their MBSR course included psycho-education and gentle yoga as well.  Sleep problems in each group were measured on a Medical Outcome Study sleep scale.  Sleep problem scores were significantly lower in the meditation group right after the course, but the benefits did not persist at follow-up.  This indicates that for the meditation to be most useful, you have to continue to meditate.  Makes sense, right?

Finally let’s talk about hot flashes.  This is a problem for women with or without breast cancer, but breast cancer treatment can certainly exacerbate the problem.  Of women who are perimenopausal and post-menopausal and who experience hot flashes, 40% of them say that the hot flashes have a significant impact on quality of life.  Researchers at the University of Massachusetts (home to Jon Kabat-Zinn and MBSR), randomized 100 women who were suffering from menopausal symptoms to MBSR or a wait list control.  Measures of “hot flash bother” were reduced in the MBSR group and the amount of reduction was similar to that found with the prescription medication venlafaxine (Effexor ™) which is an antidepressant commonly used to treat hot flashes.  Fortunately, the MBSR came without all the side effects of an antidepressant medication.  Also, there was a reduction in hot flash intensity and improvements in quality of life and sleep in the MBSR group.

The impact of meditation on hot flashes in breast cancer survivors has been studied as well.  One study randomized 40 women to yoga and meditation or usual care.  The yoga/meditation group got one 90-minute session of yoga and meditation per week for 12 weeks.  At the end of the intervention and at 3 months follow-up, the yoga/meditation group had fewer menopausal symptoms.

Meditation is easy to learn, and there are many ways to meditate.  A simple place to start is to sit in a quiet room and just focus on your breathing for 10 to 15 minutes. 

Meditation allows you to take back some control over the symptoms from your breast cancer treatment and menopause.  It’s worth a try.