Centering prayer in the treatment of Parkinson's disease preliminary quality-of-life research
1 Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Havana, Cuba.
2 University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, US.
3 Contemplative Network, Houston, Texas, US.
Research Article
World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 2022, 16(02), 870-875
Article DOI: 10.30574/wjarr.2022.16.2.1250
Publication history:
Received on 11 October 2022; revised on 18 November 2022; accepted on 21 November 2022
Abstract:
Parkinson's Disease (PD) affects nearly a million Americans, a number that will increase over the coming decades. L-DOPA has been the most effective treatment. While available medical therapies help control symptoms during the initial years following diagnosis, higher doses are required over time, increasing side effects and decreasing control of symptoms. As a result, patients suffering from PD become refractory to conventional treatments.
The authors anecdotally observed a significant symptom reduction in a patient who practiced Centering Prayer (CP), taught by Hesse. As a last choice, the experience led the authors to apply teaching CP to four current patients to improve their quality of life. We studied these patients before and after practicing CP, assessing tremors by electromyography records and applying the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS).
A control group of four PD patients with high UPDRS, who were not trained in CP, were also selected. During the active phase of PD symptoms, electromyography (EMG) testing was conducted before and 30 minutes after the CP session in the test group. EMG testing was also done on the control group during the active phase of symptoms, and the groups were compared for a reduction in EMG amplitude. All patients showed a significant reduction in EMG amplitude after the CP session. There were significant UPDRS score decrements at 30 and 45 minutes, lasting up to 60 minutes. These important clinical and EMG results were not found in the control group. With these results, our group plans to collect greater samples of PD patients for proposing CP practice as an alternative treatment for this Disease.
Keywords:
Parkinson's Disease (PD); Centering prayer (CP); Tremor; Rigidity; L-DOPA; Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS)
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Copyright © 2022 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article. This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Liscense 4.0