Meditation reduces HbA1c levels in patients with type 2 diabetes: Study

Diabetes results in a considerable physical burden resulting in economic, psychological, and well-being burdens to the patients, their families and society. The critical physical burden includes microvascular (18.2%) and macrovascular (12.3%) complications. Meditation may positively impact self-management and could also reduce diabetes complications. However, there has yet to be a proper assessment of the e systematic examination of meditation effects without additional components on self-management in this population.

In the study, meditation was defined as practices focusing on integrating body and mind to calm the individual's mind and body and enhance their overall well-being. Meditation's common components are maintaining attention, breathing, relaxation, and awareness of the body and mind in the present moment.

Against the above background, Seongkum Heo, Professor at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia, and colleagues aimed to examine the effects of meditation interventions on self-management (i.e., control of glucose, cholesterol, blood pressure, and obesity and self-management) among type 2 diabetes patients in randomized controlled trials.

For this purpose, they searched six electronic databases using primary keywords of diabetes, meditation and self-management in March 2022. Eight studies comprising nine articles using mindfulness-based meditation were included.

The authors reported the following findings:

• The meta-analysis showed that meditation improved hemoglobin A1c (effect size = −0.75; 95% confidence interval, −1.30 to −0.21) but not fasting blood glucose.
• Only a few studies examined meditation's effects on other types of self-management (e.g., blood pressure, body mass index, cholesterol, diet, exercise, foot care, and monitoring of blood glucose), and the effects could have been more consistent.
• In 1 study, meditation improved diabetes self-management.

The study showed that mindfulness-based meditation interventions without any other interventions led to a significant difference in HbA1c between the intervention and the control groups at follow-ups, favoring the interventions in adult type 2 diabetes patients. The researchers suggest that healthcare providers and researchers can use meditation interventions to improve HbA1c in this population.

"Meditation interventions, however, did not consistently improve other types of self-management," the researchers wrote.

One gap in the literature was the need for mediation studies that assess the effects on different self-management types, except for glycemic control. Another gap was that in this population effects of only mindfulness-based meditation interventions were examined.

"Further studies are therefore needed to examine the effects of different meditation types on different self-management types," the team concluded. "In addition, researchers can consider adding more components to mindfulness-based meditation interventions to improve more types of self-management."

Reference:

Heo, Seongkum PhD, RN; Kang, JungHee PhD, MPH, RN; Umeakunne, Erica MSN, MPH, PhD(c), APRN; Lee, Sohye PhD, RN; Bertulfo, Tara F. DNP, RN, WHNP, CNE; Barbé, Tammy PhD, RN; Kim, JinShil PhD, RN; Black, Vicki PhD, RN, CNE; An, Minjeong PhD, RN; Randolph, Justus PhD. Effects of Meditation Intervention on Self-management in Adult Patients With Type 2 Diabetes: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-analysis. The Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing ():10.1097/JCN.0000000000000973, February 3, 2023. | DOI: 10.1097/JCN.0000000000000973