[http://health.yahoo.com/search/healthnews?lb=p&p=id%3A10023]
Relaxation Training Helps Patients Put Mind Over Matter
Reduces Nausea, Pain, Anxiety, and Depression
February 15, 2002 06:12:27 AM PST, ACS News Today
For many years scientists have studied whether relaxation training helps cancer
patients deal with side effects of treatment and symptoms of the disease. Now it
appears that training reduces pain, nausea, anxiety, and depression.
Not only does it help, it works even when different methods are used, according
to researchers who reported their findings in the journal Psycho-Oncology (Vol.
10: 490-502).
"Overall, it can be assumed that relaxation during the course of cancer treatment
makes the experience less stressful in effectively reducing side effects," the
German authors wrote after reviewing 15 studies.
"It is a skill which patients can learn easily, giving them a personal sense of
mastery and control over their problems rather than an increased sense of
helplessness resulting from further dependency on a drug," the authors said.
Relaxation Should Become Standard Care
Relaxation training, the authors said, "surely should be used as standard
adjunctive treatment in the care of cancer patients."
Unfortunately, relaxation training is still not routinely offered to all cancer patients,
said Joy L. Fincannon, RN, MS, clinical nurse specialist in psychiatric mental
health nursing and associate medical editor for the American Cancer Society
(ACS). She has taught relaxation to cancer patients.
"It's not very common," Fincannon said. "It's often only at the major medical
centers where you have the staff to do this. It's a resource and time issue."
In other words, she said, medical centers have to consider whether they can
afford to pay someone to provide patients with the training. The training is likely
to be offered more often once more physicians and managers realize how
beneficial it is, she said.
Training Should Start Before the First Treatment
Studies such as those included in this report, Fincannon said, answered
questions such as what type of training works best, and when the training is likely
to be most effective.
For example, the authors noted that the training is most successful if it is
provided before the first medical treatment. Fincannon said she has observed
this, as well.
"If patients have a bad experience in the first chemotherapy treatment, they've
tucked that into their brains as a bad thing," Fincannon said. "If you can get them
before they've had that bad experience, they can avoid the bad association."
The researchers also discovered that patients who spent a total of just two hours
with a relaxation-training expert were successful using it on their own after that.
Among the experts most likely to have received that training are psychologists,
psychiatric nurses, nurses who are trained in hypnosis, and clinical social
workers, she noted.
Patients who aren't offered this training by their doctors can ask about it, or seek
it out through professionals, Fincannon said. But the drawback is they will have
to pay for it on their own, probably, unless their doctor can justify it as something
insurance would cover.
Patients Tense, then Relax One Muscle at a Time
The researchers from Hamburg and Bochum in Germany, analyzed studies done
by other scientists in the US, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The studies
looked at a combined total of 742 people, between 1981 and 1995.
In most of the studies, the patients participated in "progressive muscle
relaxation," or PMR. This method involves the patient first tensing, then relaxing
muscles, focusing on one body part at a time, Fincannon said. For example, they
might tense and then relax the face, then neck, then shoulders, moving on to the
rest of the body.
Other methods used in the studies, sometimes in combination with PMR,
included guided imagery and hypnosis.
"The consistency of the positive results obtained in the group of studies ? is
remarkable," the authors wrote. They noted that patients greatly reduced nausea,
pain, anxiety, depression, hostility, blood pressure, and pulse rate.
This was achieved, they wrote, "despite wide variations in type of cancer, stage
of disease, chemotherapy protocol, etc. This fact was especially noteworthy if
one considers that the research was conducted by separate groups of
investigators using different research methods."
Fincannon has used several methods in teaching patients to relax depending
upon their disease. For patients with leukemia, for example, muscle soreness
may make the tensing part of PMR painful.
With most of her patients, she would make audio tapes they could keep, using
the tapes to guide them to relax during chemotherapy, or just to fall asleep at
home. And the tapes can still be used when the patients are well.
"This is a skill you can learn that you have for the rest of your life," she said, "no
matter what situation you're in."