A Study of Effect of Spiritual Care and Raga Chikitsa on Glycaemic Control in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Hypertension

Aims: The study aims to assess the direct effect of spiritual audiotherapy (form of yoga and meditation) with counselling on glycaemic control and well-being of patients diagnosed with T2DM with HTN.

Methods: Study was conducted on 32 T2DM patients with HTN who were given spiritual audiotherapy and counselling (based on MATCH guidelines). Glycaemic control was assessed by continuous glucose monitoring system, and patients’ health related quality of life was measured by a Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy - General version 4 (FACT-G) version questionnaire, and spirituality were assessed by The Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy–Spiritual WellBeing Scale( FACIT-Sp scale).

Results: There was a significant drop in average glucose over the duration of the study with increased amount of time spent in range and reduction in time spent above the range. Patients also had improvement in glycated haemoglobin over a period of time as shown in Figure 2. Patients also had improvement in FACT-G and FACIT-Sp scores.

Conclusions: This is the first study of spiritual audiotherapy in T2DM. It has clearly demonstrated the benefits of same in improving glycemic control, reducing glucose variability, helping reduce the medication burden and the improvement in health-related quality of life in T2DM.