Doctors may do better to provide their nervous patients with a mindfulness app than a TV in the waiting room, with a US study suggesting meditation helps them pay attention to health information.

Some relaxing and mood-altering listening might help them feel calmer, enabling them to better attend to and understand health messages, researchers say.

The University of Michigan psychologists carried out a series of four studies involving nearly 1450 adults in total, carried out either on psychology students, in the lab, or in the general population, online.

Participants were divided into different groups, including those who listened to a guided meditation or listened to audio with breathing exercises and relaxation, and others who listened to historical information.