Can’t sleep? Get mindful. Mindfulness, researchers at the University of Southern California are convinced, helps people get to sleep better than a sleep hygiene education program that teaches sleep improvement skills. How do they know? Futurity reports that a randomized study of 49 people, all over 55, compared the effectiveness of two methods designed to bring some shut-eye to people who have trouble getting to sleep. One was the Mindful Awareness Practice (MAPs) program at University of California, Los Angeles– a six-week, two-hour-a week program introducing mindfulness meditation to participants; and the other was a sleep hygiene program providing improvement strategies such as relaxation before bedtime, monitoring sleep behavior, and not eating before sleeping. And the winner is…mindfulness meditation. “We were surprised to find that the effect of mindfulness meditation on sleep quality was large and above and beyond the effect of the sleep hygiene education program,” says David S. Black, assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at University of Southern California. “Mindfulness meditation appears to have clinical importance by serving to reduce sleep problems among the growing population of older adults, and this effect on sleep appears to carry over into reducing daytime fatigue and depression symptoms.”
The Wise Guide to Aging