When a person breaks a bone it generally takes 6 – 12 weeks to heal. Within the 6-12-week time frame a person can experience significant pain and miss out on work, and other life events. The current way of treating someone with a fracture is by setting it, waiting for a predetermined amount of time given by the physician, then often sending the person to physical or occupational therapy. If the body can be assisted in healing faster, it would be beneficial to the patient. Imagine you are break your leg and you are told that it will be 3-4 weeks before you can put weight on the leg, and another few weeks of therapy to regain strength but you have a job, and family events that you would like to get back to as soon as possible (Bone healing: how does a bone heal, 2018). Would you try something that would possibly speed up the recovery and improve pain levels and ensure that you can get back to your job and attend whatever you want to quicker than if you just wait for the body to heal, and just deal with the pain?
Current research tells us that the mind-body connection is correlates with the ability to effect gene expression, and control pain levels, however there is not much research in the mind-body connection on healing broken bones. In the case study of a 54-year-old woman with an autoimmune disease, meditation and visual imagery aided in remission without corticosteroids. In another study on the effects of yoga and meditation it is suggested that meditation effects gene expression, and by effecting gene expression the person also effects their immune system and increases their ability to heal quicker from different ailments. This may be due in part by the stress relieving benefits of meditation that the body reacts in healthy positive ways as opposed to when a person is stressed, they tend to be sick longer, and take longer to heal when injured.
The study was designed to investigate the relationship between the mind-body role in relation to healing broken bones and reducing pain long term by using guided visual meditation. Computed tomography (CT) scans were done after injury prior to beginning the study and at 6 weeks to asses how well the fractures have healed in comparison to the first CT scan, against current data and the control group. Computed tomography has been recently shown to be an excellent tool in assessing how much damage there is and in better estimating how long the fracture will take to heal. Biologically the body tends to take a set amount of time to heal, but if that could be changed to quicken the time it takes for a person to heal by using psychological treatments by tapping into the mind-body connection it would be beneficial to patient’s wellbeing.
Throughout the literature, there were no articles found on the healing of bones mediated by meditation or the mind-body connection. There is however much research on healing autoimmune disorders, and diseases as serious as cancer, therefore the thought is that guided meditation can aid in healing bone and soft tissue damage, in addition to reduced perceived pain. This research explores the effects of guided visual meditation through the mind-body connection specifically on healing bone fractures.
There were 35 participants for each group the control group and the group receiving meditation with a total of 70 participants. The participants were involved through partnering with the clinics and hospitals around the Grand Junction, Colorado area, and were referred by their physicians for the study. Participant age range was between 20-50 years old (Dependent variable Mage = 34.06, and control group Mage = 33.2), and they were compensated with $11 per hour for their time. The participants where chosen to be between 20 and 50 years old in order to have a generally healthy demographic, and people who are less likely to be suffering from osteoporosis and other factors that would affect the results but were not screened for underlying medical diseases or disorders. The referring physicians did not tell the physical therapists of participants who were in either study in order to control for the physical therapist not knowing and possibly releasing the participant early.
Images of people doing the next stage of the healing process, such as when a participant was going to begin physical therapy the following week, they would view images of people doing those exercises (Bedford, F. L., 2012). A quiet room was used to facilitate the meditation twice a week. Imaging and baseline charts and participants charts were given to the researchers provided by the CT department to assess participants healing from week zero to week 6. Numerical pain rating scales were also provided to record participants pain in the beginning and the end of the study (Numeric pain rating scale, n.d.).
Participants were located by working with the clinics and hospitals in Grand Junction, Colorado, to find patients who had recently fractured their tibia, radius, or ulna. The patients where approached by the physicians about the study and deemed by each physician to have a probability date of release back to full recovery by 8 weeks. Once there where 70 participants numbers assigned where pulled from a hat and divided into the group receiving meditation and the control group who were only receiving physical therapy. Both groups were told that the study involved in gathering information on fractures and the time frame of healing. Each person was informed that they would fill out a questionnaire at the beginning and the end that asked about their pain, they would attend physical therapy, and would also have a CT scan done now and at the end if they decided to participate.
Those who were selected to receive meditation as well where informed that they would need to attend guided visual meditation twice a week and given time slots to choose from that would be stable throughout the study. All participants were given informed consent forms and understood that they where participating in a study that would also compensate them for their time involved with the study of $11 an hour. At the end of the last appointment when the last pain rating scale and CT scan was done each participant was debriefed and informed of the full extent of the study involving meditation and given their compensation for participating of $11 per hour that they attended.
The independent variable (IV) was guided visual meditation, which the participants received twice a week beginning with the first week of injury, up to and throughout their regular physical therapy. Meditation included visualization of the healing process, and images of people doing the exercises that they performed the following week. The meditation involved visualizing pain leaving their body as well. Guided meditation with visualization tools was chosen, because visual imagery has been shown to have more immediate although short lived effects, and mediation has been linked to longer effects demonstrated with strength testing, pain, and symptom relief.
The dependent variables (DV) were measuring the time frame of all participants from injury to release date as deemed by the physician and physical therapist, perceived pain, and CT scan results that were compared to the initial scan and against the baseline data for fracture repair without intervention. The goal of the study was to explore the possibility that patients who participate in guided visual meditation geared towards healing could cause a physical reaction that would decrease the time it takes to heal and improve their pain levels by the end of the meditation, and physical therapy more than physical therapy alone. The research showed that the participants who received the meditation component where more likely to be released by their physician and the physical therapist earlier (Mweeks =5.81, SDweeks = 0.664) than the 6-week projected time frame.
The control group who only received physical therapy and no meditation (Mweeks = 6.118, SDweeks = 0.729) stayed in physical therapy closer to 6 weeks. See Table 1. In conjunction with more rapid healing, there was also a marked decrease in pain (add mean IV pain levels here) with the participants in the IV group, who received guided meditation with imagery. The control group participants had _______ number of participants with some pain remaining (Mean of pain from group) at the end of the study, upon release from physical therapy. These findings suggest that meditation may have a role in reducing pain and decreasing total time spend healing after a fracture due to the adding the mind-body element of guided visual mediation to current physical therapy practices.
The purpose of the study was to explore the possibility between the mind-body interaction as mediated by guided meditation with visual imagery on healing fractures. Use of a computed tomography (CT) machine, imaging of the fractures shows that there is some evidence that meditation may play a role in healing by using the mind-body interactions. Though the study suggests that meditation aids in quicker heal times from a fracture a larger and greater detailed study would need to be performed in order to find a causal relationship. The results of the study were not as pronounced as anticipated by the researchers.
There was a small causal relationship between the participants who participated in meditation twice per week, although a second study would be more beneficial in determining the relationship of meditation on healing fractures. A further study with daily meditation and further inquiry into each participants belief surrounding meditation would be beneficial into figuring out if subjects who participated in meditation believed that it would work. The theory is that some of the participants did not believe that the meditation would work which may skew the data and not show results for certain participants. The researchers did not screen for underlying medical conditions either. As a downfall of the research if participants had been screened for any health conditions such as osteoporosis, low levels of calcium, vitamin D, and other factors that may have a role in fracture healing the results may have turned out more favorable.
