Influences of Yoga Meditation on the Blood Pressure and Quality of Life of Elderly Patients with Maintenance Hemodialysis

Objective: This paper aimed at exploring the influences of regular yoga meditation on the quality of life of elderly patients with MHD. Method: 35 patients with MHD in Blood Purification Center of Jining First People's Hospital were selected as sports therapy group (29 patients finished the study) and 27 patients with MHD in the same period in Blood Purification Center of Urology Department of Jining First People's Hospital l, whose general conditions were matched, were selected as the control group. The meditation group carried out 16-week intradialytic yoga meditation activity and the control group took no intervention measure. Mindfulness Mantra Meditation was adopted as the meditation mode and the meditation training included group training and family training, five times/week and 30 min/time. The training was arranged in the afternoon and lasted for 16 weeks. The differences of the blood pressure and SF-36 Quality of Life Brief Scale (QOL-BREF) between two groups before and after 16-week sports therapy were observed. Results: In the study process, 6 cases quitted from the meditation group and there were no serious adverse events on all the study objects in this process. Compared with the condition before 16-week mindfulness meditation training, the systolic blood pressure (SBP) of the meditation group decreased greatly (t=2.215 and P 0.05). Furthermore, the score of MCS significantly improved compared with the condition before therapy (t=2.563, P 0.05) of PCS before and after the therapy. Conclusion: 16-week intradialytic yoga meditation activity can significantly improve the blood pressure level of patients and efficiently improve scores of BP, RP, VT, RE, MH, GH and MCS in QOL-BREF. Furthermore, mindfulness meditation also can reduce the anxiety level and it can be good to the emotional and physical health and strengthen the physical and psychological health. Mindfulness meditation is easy and safe to carry out. Its effect is efficient and no serious adverse events are attributable to the therapy with it. It is worth promoting among people, especially the elderly patients.