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Top researchers strongly uphold rigorous research on health benefits of Transcendental Meditation

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9 August 2007

Eminent researchers in the US and abroad have strongly upheld the rigorously and extensively researched health benefits of Transcendental Meditation, and criticized a new meditation and health study as 'flawed, incomplete, and incorrect'. These experts include:

C Noel Bairey Merz, MD, FACC, FAHA
Medical Director and Endowed Chair, Women's Health Program,
Preventive Cardiac and Women's Heart Centers
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, USA

Robert Schneider, MD, FACC
Director, NIH-Funded Institute of Natural Medicine and Prevention
Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa, USA

Hector Myers, PhD
Professor of Psychology
University of California at Los Angeles, USA

Vernon Barnes, PhD
Research Scientist, Department of Pediatrics, Medical College of Georgia
Augusta, Georgia, USA

Professor Harald Walach
University of Northampton School of Social Sciences
Samueli Institute for Information Biology
United Kingdom

A growing number of researchers in the US and abroad have reviewed the controversial new US government-funded report and are critical of its conclusions. The consensus among them is that the report, which found that meditation does not improve health, is methodologically flawed, incomplete, and should be retracted.

'Meditation Practices for Health: State of the Research' was a health technology assessment report conducted at the University of Alberta (Canada) and sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the US NIH-National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The report was released earlier this month.

Respected reviewer urged authors to withhold publication—'Analytical strategy looked haphazard and ad hoc'
Professor Harald Walach of the University of Northampton School of Social Sciences and the Samueli Institute for Information Biology in England reviewed the paper before its release and strongly urged the authors to withhold publication. 'When I looked carefully into the details of the study, the whole analytical strategy looked rather haphazard and ad hoc,' Walach said.

Relevant studies excluded from AHRQ findings
Robert Schneider, MD, FACC, is one of the leading researchers on the health effects of meditation in the US. Dr Schneider has been the recipient of more than US$22 million in grants from the US federal government's National Institutes of Health over the past 20 years for his research on the effects of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) Technique and natural medicine on cardiovascular disease. He says that relevant findings were excluded from the report, including peer-reviewed studies on the effects of this meditation technique on hypertension, cardiovascular disease, myocardial ischemia, atherosclerosis, changes to physiology, and improvements to mental and physical health.

Dr Schneider cited two studies published in the American Journal of Cardiology in 2005, which demonstrated that individuals with high blood pressure who were randomly assigned to TM groups had a 30% lower risk for mortality than controls. These studies should have been included in the AHRQ report, Dr Schneider said, but were inexplicably excluded. In addition, 75 published studies were overlooked, even though these were sent to the authors by one of the reviewers.

Dr Schneider said the AHRQ report incorrectly analyzed studies and incorrectly rated the quality of the studies while applying statistical methods poorly, arbitrarily, and unsystematically. The report also included errors in collecting data from research studies, in recording data from papers, and in classifying studies. Several peer-reviewers pointed out major errors and inadequacies in the report prior to publication. However, these critiques by outside reviewers were largely ignored. (For critiques of the report, see www.mum.edu/inmp.)

Dr Schneider also cited a study published in the American Medical Association's journal Archives of Internal Medicine in 2006—one year after the AHRQ review ended in 2005—which confirmed that the Transcendental Meditation Technique lowers high blood pressure in heart disease patients. The study was conducted at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and was funded by a $1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Dr Schneider directs the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, USA, which was supported by an $8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health as a specialized centre of research in complementary and alternative medicine and cardiovascular disease.

Copyright © 2007 Global Good News(sm) Service

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