Association of meditation and injury in older adults

Background: Serious injuries may substantially and negatively affect the health, longevity, and quality of life of older adults. Catastrophic injuries account for a large proportion of healthcare expenditures among elders, and therefore, instituting methods to reduce their incidence would be valuable. Meditation has been shown to enhance awareness of a practitioner’s environment and thereby may considerably decrease the risk of injuries. We explored the association between different kinds of meditation practice and injury incidence in older adults.

Methods: Data were obtained from the 2012 Alternative Medicine Supplement of the National Health Interview Survey. Participants 65 years and older (n=7,382) were asked if they had engaged in Mantra, Mindfulness, and Spiritual meditation in the previous 12 months. Participants were also asked if they had seen a physician due to an injury in the past 3 months. Logistic regression was then used to model the association between practicing each kind of meditation and experiencing an injury with adjustment for survey design, race/ethnicity, sex, and income.

Results: Spiritual meditation was the most common meditation practiced by the older adults in our sample (1.9%). Compared to not engaging in this meditation, those who practiced Spiritual meditation had significantly lower odds of having had an injury severe enough to visit a physician (Odds ratio=0.15; 95% confidence interval=0.03-0.70). There was a trend towards lower risk of injury among those who practiced Mantra meditation and Mindfulness meditation [(0.21; 0.03-1.08) and (0.40; 0.08-1.88), respectively], but neither reached the level of significance.

Conclusion: Meditation practice has been linked to many health benefits, as well as improved attention and awareness. Although not commonly practiced, we found that Spiritual meditation such as Centering Prayer and Contemplative Meditation was associated with lower injury rates among older adults, with suggestive findings for the other forms of meditation. Mechanisms by which the practice of meditation might lower injury risk are unknown; additional research is needed to identify any causal associations.