Mindfulness Meditation to Promote Wellness and Manage Chronic Disease

Lifestyle medicine is a patient-engaged field that has grown in tandem with our increasing knowledge of the importance of lifestyle factors and modifiable health behaviors for disease prevention, health promotion, and the management of chronic illness. Stress is at the epicenter of many negative behaviors that contribute to unhealthy lives, such as smoking, overeating, and unhealthy diets, and lack of activity. Mindfulness meditation is a stress reduction practice that teaches awareness, appreciation, and nonjudgmental acceptance of one’s present experience, thereby short-circuiting reactive, automatic stress reactions. Our systematic review and meta-analysis focuses on the application of randomized controlled mindfulness intervention studies across a broad range of populations and conditions that are relevant to lifestyle medicine. In addition to organizing and highlighting mindfulness research studies that are relevant to the field of lifestyle medicine, we also empirically examine the impact of study d...