Ngô, Thanh-Lan · Sante mentale au Quebec · 2013 · DOI
This review looked at whether mindfulness meditation—a practice of focused attention and acceptance—can help improve both mental and physical health. The authors found that mindfulness may reduce stress, ease chronic pain and fatigue, improve sleep, and help the body's immune system work better. They also describe how meditation appears to change the way the brain works, particularly in areas that control emotions, attention, and how we perceive physical sensations.
For ME/CFS patients and researchers, this review is relevant because it examines mindfulness as a potentially modifiable intervention for chronic fatigue syndrome and highlights putative neurobiological mechanisms—including immune function, inflammation, and autonomic nervous system regulation—that are directly pertinent to ME/CFS pathophysiology. Understanding potential non-pharmacological approaches and their proposed mechanisms may inform both patient management strategies and future mechanistic research in ME/CFS.
This review does not prove that mindfulness is effective specifically for ME/CFS, as it synthesizes mostly observational and uncontrolled studies without presenting randomized controlled trial data or meta-analytic evidence. The observed associations do not establish causality, and the quality and rigor of the underlying studies supporting each claim are not systematically evaluated in the abstract. The mechanisms described are proposed and speculative; not all are equally well-supported by neuroimaging evidence.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Ngô, Thanh-Lan (2013). [Review of the effects of mindfulness meditation on mental and physical health and its mechanisms of action].. Sante mentale au Quebec. https://doi.org/10.7202/1023988ar
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-ng-2013-review-effects,
author = {Ngô, Thanh-Lan},
title = {[Review of the effects of mindfulness meditation on mental and physical health and its mechanisms of action].},
journal = {Sante mentale au Quebec},
year = {2013},
doi = {10.7202/1023988ar},
note = {PubMed: 24719001},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/ng-2013-review-effects},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/ng-2013-review-effects
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