According to Ramadevi Gourineni, principal study investigator and director of the insomnia programme at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Illinois, insomnia is thought to be a 24-hour problem of hyper-arousal. Moreover, elevated measures of arousal are seen throughout the day.

The study collected data from 11 healthy subjects between the ages of 25 and 45 years who suffered from chronic primary insomnia. Participants were divided into two intervention groups for two months. The first group was taught Kriya Yoga, a form of meditation that is used to focus internalised attention and has been shown to reduce measures of arousal. The second group received health education.

Participants of the health education group also received information about health-related topics and how to improve health through nutrition, exercise, weight loss and stress management.

Results suggested that patients saw improvements in subjective sleep quality and sleep diary parameters while practising meditation. Patients who practised meditation saw improvements in sleep latency, total sleep time, total wake time, wake after sleep onset, sleep efficiency and sleep quality.

Findings of this study were presented at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

Dr. Ramadevi Gourineni has a special interest in the behavioural treatment of insomnia and is currently involved in research studying the effects of meditation on stress and sleep in individuals with chronic insomnia.

Source: IANS