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NIH-sponsored study finds Transcendental Meditation dramatically reduces death in heart disease patients
by Global Good News staff writer

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27 November 2012

A recently published study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health found that the practice of Transcendental Meditation reduced the incidence of death, stroke, and heart attack by 48% in patients.

Robert Schneider, MD, author of the book Total Heart Health: How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease with the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health, was the lead researcher involved with the study. Dr Schneider is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and he is the director of more than $20 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health.*

The study was published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.**

Dr Schneider spoke about the study's findings, but first he put the importance of the findings in perspective.

He said, 'Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality worldwide.'

Because of this, Maharishi University of Management, in collaboration with the Medical College of Wisconsin, undertook a large ten-year study looking at the effects of Transcendental Meditation on heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, and mortality.

The subjects, African-Americans with heart disease, both male and female and around 59 years old, were randomly assigned to two groups.

One group was taught Transcendental Meditation and asked to meditate for 20 minutes twice a day. The other group was given health education with the conventional instructions for diet and exercise. Both groups continued their standard medical care.

Subjects were followed on average for more than five years.

The event-free survival rate was 'averaged over the whole study', said Dr Schneider. 'When you look at that average, there was a 48% reduction in risk for death, heart attack, and stroke in the Transcendental Meditation group.'

A second finding was that the subjects who practised Transcendental Meditation had lower blood pressure. Dr Schneider theorized that this result may help explain the dramatically lower incidence of heart attack, stroke, and death.

* Dr Schneider is also Director of the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention and Dean of Maharishi College of Perfect Health at Maharishi University of Management.

** Journal Reference: Robert H. Schneider, Clarence E. Grim, Maxwell V. Rainforth, Theodore Kotchen, Sanford I. Nidich, Carolyn Gaylord-King, John W. Salerno, Jane Morley Kotchen, and Charles N. Alexander. Stress Reduction in the Secondary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease: Randomized, Controlled Trial of Transcendental Meditation and Health Education in Blacks. Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes, November 13 2012. DOI: 10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.112.967406

© Copyright 2012 Global Good News^®

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