Practice meditation, control AIDS: Study

Baba Ramdev, who revolutionised Yoga is doing magic now. Yoga's small but powerful organ, Meditation has the capacity to lower the worsening of AIDS, if researchers are to be believed.

Although Ramdev, the founder of Patanjali Yog Peeth, Haridwar has been advocating for meditation including some Asanas of Yoga have the power to cure some incurable diseases even cancer too, it is for the first time that such stake has been claimed by western researchers.

A team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles has found that meditation can decelerate the damaging of CD4 T cells. The CD4 T cells are considered to be the brains of the immune system and assist it in battling against the pernicious attacks. AIDS virus strikes on these cells and destroys it gradually resulting into patients' decaying health.

But the researchers led by David Creswell did notice that practising meditation daily slow down the decaying of CD4 T cells also known as CD4+T lymphocytes. Meditation prevents mind from diving into the pool of thoughts. The more the people meditate, the higher their CD4 T cells counts. The CD4 counts were gauged before and after the two-month programme.

The tests involved two groups of people. A total of 67 HIV-positive individuals were selected for the test of which 48 were kept in the first group and the rest were kept in the second group. The first group was instructed to practice a stress-lowering program-mindfulness meditation. The purpose of meditation was to develop positive thinking in the patients by guiding them to practice an open and receptive awareness of the present moment and get rid of past and future.

The meditation classes were held everyday for two hours for two months followed by a daily home practice.

On the contrary, the second group was simply allowed to attend a one-day seminar on mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) meditation.

At the end of two months, whereas the first group showed an immense growth in the production of CD4 T cells, the second group showed decreasing rate of the same.

On the basis of number of CD4 T cells, the researchers came at the conclusion that how well the immune system fights the AIDS virus and how meditation helps in increasing the CD4 T cells.

Although David was ignorant of how the stress-reducing effects of meditation work, but said it may directly boost CD4 T-cell levels, or suppress the virus.

The findings were published in the journal Brain, Behaviour and Immunity.