Mindfulness at the VA
can help in three ways.
It helps the veterans.
with the issues that they have,
necessarily
provider.
the health care provider--
so the clinician--
of themselves
because the rates of burnout
are very high.
the interaction of the two
in the clinical setting,
with compassion fatigue
as engaged or attuned
work with as clinicians.
it's a win-win for everybody.
from conflict--
and Afghanistan--
of physiological arousal,
of course PTSD symptoms,
fight or flight.
or just focus on your breathing
to make a different choice.
And, of course, this is something that we can see.
This is our experience as teachers of mindfulness,
and this is something that our students,
uh, feel immediately.
They come into our classes and say,
"I was triggered by something, and I didn't react."
And that is huge.
An Iraqi combat vet...
was in the supermarket, and, uh,
he had a PTSD diagnosis, and had been taking
mindfulness MBSR series.
And it was busy, and 5:00 p.m., and the carts are coming
from unexpected places, and he's getting more and more anxious.
He's finally in line to check out.
Three people in line, and the woman
at the checkout line is only getting one item,
and, of course, the story he starts telling himself:
She's in the wrong place. Why is it taking so long?
She has a baby.
She's talking to the checker.
It goes on and on,
and he's getting more and more anxious,
and it's all he can do
just to stay there,
just to breathe and track his breath.
Then she hands the baby over to the checker,
and the checker's bouncing the baby.
He finally gets up there, and instead of yelling
at the checker, he says to her, "Cute baby."
She says, "Oh, you think so?
"Thanks. That's my son.
"You know, my husband was killed in Iraq last year,
"and I've had to go
"back to work to support our family.
"And, you know, my mom just brings him in here
"just a couple of times a day
"and, you know, she just buys one thing,
just so I get to see my son."
The ability to observe the sensations in the body
and the thoughts going through the mind
helps vets to find their way
back to being at peace inside their body again.
There's an emerging body of evidence
that is expanding every day rapidly,
and mindfulness modalities for health.
Uh, in my mind, though, it makes sense
to think of them in three general areas.
The first kind of column of this
is mood symptoms like depression and anxiety.
The research is indicating that the effect size
for mindfulness for symptom reduction
is in the average,
medium to large range.
This is fantastic news.
I don't look sad.
regarding depression, anxiety,
a smile more than I used to.
The second kind of column for me of research
is the physiological
or the... sort of the biological measures.
So, looking at mindfulness
and seeing what's happening in the body,
not just in things like
cortisol and stress hormone reduction.
But now we're getting into new realms
showing very exciting works in epigenetics.
In just six to eight weeks, as many as 60 genes
that regulate inflammatory processes in the body
were being turned on or off in the appropriate direction.
So, when people have aches and pains
and tiredness and fatigue,
we're teaching a behavioral approach
that can have epigenetic implications
in how their genome's being expressed,
and this has profound implications
in their own health care.
Also in column two, uh, some of the evidence
that connects mindfulness
to biomarker changes in the body,
it has to do with mindfulness impacting cellular aging.
And how they're looking at this
is through the examination of telomeres.
chromosome, there are telomeres
like the little, um, caps
and they get shorter over time,
with stress.
And there's evidence that's preliminary--
but still very fascinating--
to suggest that a mindfulness practice
can help change the path of cellular aging.
The third kind of research domain
is this idea of neuroplasticity.
That, as the brain fires, it wires.
We're teaching practices
not just for attention,
but for compassion and kindness,
that can help rewire the brain in as little as eight weeks.
We can see through brain imaging
differences in people's subcortical structures
and how the neural pathways connect.
This has long-term implications for things like mood regulation.
Also, veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan
with traumatic brain injury
and intractable posttraumatic headache,
we're exploring to see if meditation can not only
provide them some felt relief
with their chronic pain, with their headache,
but doing some pre and post brain images
to see if we're able to alter this
intractable posttraumatic headache
with a meditation intervention.
We're at an interesting time in health care delivery,
I think in the country, but certainly at the VA.
In a very important way,
we're shifting the locus of control
from the health care provider in a white coat
into the veteran.
We are teaching veterans
to handle the day-to-day issues
that come up in their lives.
They're taking these tools
and using it every day in their lives.
Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org