CHICAGO, Jun. 12, 2006

(AP) Heart disease patients who practiced meditation for four months showed slight improvements in blood pressure and insulin levels, a small, government-funded study found.

Patients who learned Transcendental Meditation did better on those measures than patients who spent the same amount of time on lectures, discussions and homework assignments about the effects of stress, diet and exercise on the heart.

The 103 heart patients participating in the study received regular medical care, including drugs for lowering cholesterol and blood pressure.

Adding meditation had "a strong enough effect that we could show a benefit over traditional health care, and traditional health care is pretty good now," said study co-author Dr. Noel Bairey Merz of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. "I think it's a testimony to this intervention that we could see anything."

Some of the researchers involved are affiliated with the organization that teaches Transcendental Meditation around the world, raising questions about potential bias, said Jim Lane of Duke University School of Medicine, who had no part in the study.

The research team included doctors from the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. The school was founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who started a movement to teach meditation worldwide and was a guru to the Beatles and the Beach Boys.

"I would like to see this replicated by other investigators, especially by those not part of the TM organization," Lane said. He is conducting similar research on meditation without the endorsement of the TM group.

Merz said she does not meditate and is not paid by the TM organization, although others on the research team were. She said the potential for bias in her study was no greater than in studies where a researcher gets financial support from a drug company.

The study appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine. Funding came from the National Center for Alternative and Complementary Medicine and the National Center for Research Resources.

Transcendental Meditation involves sitting quietly and focusing on a repeated sound, called a mantra, for about 20 minutes every morning and evening. The practice traces its roots to ancient India. Today, it costs $2,000 to learn Transcendental Meditation in a series of lectures, personal instruction and group meetings.

Previous studies have found meditation can lower blood pressure, but the new study is the first to show an effect on insulin function, Lane said.

After starting either meditation or the health education program, neither group saw changes in cholesterol levels or weight. The health education group got more exercise.

The meditation group saw its average systolic blood pressure _ the top number _ decrease from 126 to 123. The diastolic blood pressure _ the bottom reading _ did not change in either group. Glucose and insulin levels dropped somewhat in the meditation group and increased slightly in the health education group.

The researchers speculated that the difference is caused by meditation decreasing the body's natural reaction to stress, possibly by lowering blood levels of the "fight or flight" hormone cortisol. Merz said the study was designed to measure cortisol levels in saliva, but the samples dried up because they were not stored correctly.

By LAURA JOHANNES

March 7, 2006; Page D6

Can ancient Indian spirituality help treat cardiovascular disease? Advocates of Transcendental Meditation say it can lower blood pressure, reduce arterial clogging and even cut death rates. Some research backs these claims, but the most supportive data come from scientists with ties to the movement. Cardiologists say it may work, but note its high costs in time and money.

* * *

A third of Americans have high blood pressure, and it affects two-thirds of the population over age 65. It is treated by medication, diet and exercise. If not kept under control, high blood pressure can lead to heart attacks, heart failure, strokes and kidney failure.

Transcendental Meditation, or TM, was introduced to the U.S. in the 1950s by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It aims to transcend normal thinking to bring the mind to its quietest state. The Maharishi Vedic Education Development Corp., a Fairfield, Iowa, nonprofit that sponsors courses, recommends two 20-minute sessions daily of the meditation, which involves silently repeating a short sound chosen for you by your teacher. The entry-level course costs $2,000 for 10 to 12 hours of instruction as well as the promise of free lifetime checks on your technique. Anyone can teach forms of meditation, but Transcendental Meditation is the trademarked name of a method available only through this group. It is rarely covered by insurance.

Several prominent medical journals have published positive studies on TM, some of which were funded by the National Institutes of Health. The May 1, 2005, issue of the American Journal of Cardiology reported a 30% decrease in the death rate from heart disease among high-blood-pressure patients who practiced TM, compared with controls who were randomly assigned to receive health education or other types of meditation or relaxation therapy. The study analyzed death data for an average of 7.6 years in test subjects who completed two previous three-month studies. One weakness is that it isn't known how many of the patients continued to meditate after the initial three-month study periods.

Several co-authors of this and other supportive studies have ties to the TM movement, including Robert Schneider, a scientist at Maharishi University of Management, founded by the Maharishi in 1971. Dr. Schneider says the TM technique provides greater benefits than other types of meditation because instead of encouraging active thought it uses unique methods to achieve a "quieter state of the human mind." That, in turn, he says is believed to reduce levels of stress hormones such as cortisol.

Other studies have found TM can decrease blood pressure and clogging of the arteries. Some cardiologists are skeptical of the work, in part because many of the study authors include staff or graduates of Maharishi University of Management. Vernon Barnes, a scientist at Medical College of Georgia whose work supports TM's cardiovascular benefits, received a doctorate in physiology from Maharishi University of Management, though he says he receives no money from the TM movement.

Michael Weber, a professor at the SUNY Downstate College of Medicine in Brooklyn, N.Y., says patients should view the results with caution given the ties to TM of many of the scientists. He says the studies in favor of TM aren't rigorous enough to prove it works, and haven't been adequately replicated by independent scientists. In the mid-1970s, Dr. Weber co-wrote an uncontrolled study, published in the British journal Lancet, which found sixth months of TM failed to lower the blood pressure of 20 patients.

Dr. Weber adds that, if you can afford it, there's no reason not to try meditation if it sounds like something which you might enjoy. However, he adds, time-strapped patients should be sure not to neglect diet and exercise, which have more solid proof behind them.

FORBES

TUESDAY, June 13 (HealthDay News) -- Meditation may do more than bring you inner peace; a new study claims it may improve your cardiovascular health by decreasing the risk of metabolic syndrome.

In a study reported in the June 12 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers report that the practice of transcendental meditation can significantly decrease insulin resistance, lower blood pressure and decrease heart rate variability.

"It's possible to use the mind-body connection to tap into the body's own inner intelligence to bring about changes in physiology to reverse the risk of diabetes and heart disease," said Dr. Robert Schneider, director of the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at the Maharishi University of Management in Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa. Schneider is also a co-author of the book Total Heart Health.

Of the reduction in insulin resistance, Schneider noted, "a reduction like this would make a drug company a lot of money. The only other things that could bring about such a reduction are intensive exercise or a large weight loss."

Insulin resistance is one of the key players in metabolic syndrome, a group of cardiovascular risk factors that occur simultaneously, thus increasing the risk of heart disease. When the body doesn't properly use insulin, excess glucose remains in the blood, which affects many of the body's functions. Excess glucose causes a rise in triglycerides and other blood fats. It also impairs kidney function, which can lead to high blood pressure.

In collaboration with researchers from the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Schneider and his colleagues recruited 103 people who had already been diagnosed with heart disease to study the effects of transcendental meditation on heart disease risk factors. Eighty-four of these recruits completed the 16 weeks of the study.

The average age of the study participants was about 67, and slightly more than 40 percent were male. The average body mass index was 28, which means the average study volunteer was overweight, but not obese. About one-third had a history of high blood pressure, and 9 percent had diabetes.

The study participants were randomized into one of two groups for the study. One group received training in and practiced transcendental meditation twice a day for 20 minutes at a time for four months, while the other group received health education about heart disease.

Schneider explained that transcendental meditation involves sitting quietly while your mind settles into a quieter and quieter state until you're not thinking at all, literally "transcending the thinking process," he said.

The researchers found that systolic blood pressure -- that's the top number -- dropped by more than 3 points in the meditation group and went up more than 2 points in the health education group during the study period.

Meditation also had positive effects on heart rate variability, another measure of heart health. A decrease in heart rate variability is a negative sign, and those in the health education group had a decrease in heart rate variability during the study period, while those in the meditation group saw a slight increase in heart rate variability.

The most significant change, according to Schneider, was seen in insulin resistance. In a measurement that compares fasting blood glucose and insulin levels, the health education group went up 0.52 while the meditation group went down by 0.75 -- a "significant" change, according to the authors.

"This is important. It's not earthshaking news, but [these researchers] have extended the information on transcendental meditation to include insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome," said Dr. Louis Teichholz, medical director of cardiology and complementary medicine at Hackensack University Medical Center.

Teichholz said these benefits probably aren't limited to transcendental meditation, but likely include other forms of relaxation, such as yoga, tai chi, guided imagery, biofeedback and even exercise. Schneider, however, pointed out that right now, transcendental meditation is the only method that's been proven in randomized clinical trials.

He said meditation and other forms of relaxation have beneficial effects because they activate the parasympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system, which helps calm down the body's fight-or-flight response, which is triggered by the body's sympathetic nervous system. When the sympathetic system is activated by stress, it causes the body to release hormones, and those hormones can help make the body resistant to insulin. However, when the parasympathetic system is activated, the body's cells become more responsive to insulin, Teichholz explained.

"You can't always change the stress," he said. "But it's not the stress that matters, but how you respond to it. If you can respond in a different way, you can negate some of the negative effects of stress."

AHN Media Corp Study:

March 16, 2007 2:12 p.m. EST

Linda Young - All Headline News Staff Writer Philadelphia, PA (AHN) -

Just get yourself a mantra and learn to use it if you want to avoid developing congestive heart failure, research suggests.

A University of Pennsylvania study found that Transcendental Meditation could significantly reduce the severity of congestive heart failure. It accomplishes that by helping people reduce the level of stress that they experience, the study's authors say.

People who practice TM do so by reciting mentally a polysyllabic word or sound in Sanskrit, called a mantra, for 20 minutes as they focus inward on relaxing and stilling their mind to de-stress and rejuvenate themselves.

"The results of this study indicate that transcendental meditation can be effective in improving the functional capacity and quality of life of congestive heart failure patients," Ravishankar Jayadevappa, PhD, lead author and Research Assistant Professor in Penn's Division of Geriatric Medicine, said in a statement. "These results also suggest long-term improvements in survival in these individuals."

The study authors say TM probably improves heart failure by reducing sympathetic nervous system activation that is associated with stress and stress is a known contributor to heart failure. The finding from this study is consistent with previous research on TM's effect on heart disease. One of those past studies was done at the University of California and published in Stroke in 2000.

In that study, researchers found that practicing TM 20 minutes twice a day decreased the participant's artery wall thickness, according to tests by ultrasound. That could reduce heart attack risk by up to 11 percent and stroke risk by up to 15 percent. The control group, which did not practice TM and received only standard medical interventions did not experience a decline in their artery wall thickness, according to Prevention magazine reports at the time.

December 11, 2007

Dominique Herman TRANSCENDENTAL meditation (TM) has been found to be superior to other stress reduction techniques in reducing high blood pressure, according to an analysis of 107 "high quality" meditation studies published in scientific journals up until the end of last year.

“The TM technique produces a statistically significant reduction in high blood pressure that is not found with other forms of relaxation, meditation, biofeedback or stress management,” it says in a statement released by the University of Kentucky (UKY) College of Medicine and endorsed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“The magnitude of the changes in blood pressure with the TM technique are at least as great as the changes found with major changes in diet or exercise that doctors often recommend, yet the TM technique does not require changes in lifestyle,” said James Anderson, professor of medicine at UKY and co-author of the analysis, published in this month's issue of Current Hypertension Reports.

Long-term changes in blood pressure on this scale were associated with at least a 15% reduction in rates of heart attack and stroke, he said. One of the studies, in the American Heart Association's journal, Hypertension, found the TM programme was as effective as anti-hypertensive drugs in reducing blood pressure in older black men, and twice as effective as progressive muscle relaxation in lowering hypertension.

A paper presented at the International Society on Hypertension in Japan last year found reduced left ventricular mass in men and women after eight months of TM practice.

SUNDAY TIMES

published in South Africa January 13, 2008

To reduce your stress levels, raise your consciousness with Transcendental Meditation, writes Claire Keeton

TRANSCENDENTAL Meditation, made famous by the Beatles’ pilgrimage to India, is not just for rock stars or hermits. Stressed-out executives, workers and even students could benefit from it as it significantly reduces high blood pressure, a scientific study shows.

Researchers analysed the results of trials involving people with high blood pressure over a period of eight years on average and found that TM groups, compared with control groups, had:

-- 23% lower death rate from all causes in the period studied; and

-- 30% lower rate of cardiovascular disease mortality (such as heart attacks and strokes) in the period .

“Our analysis showed clinically and statistically significant changes in blood pressure among those on the TM programmes,” said one of the authors, Professor Robert Schneider of the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, supported by the US National Institutes of Health. Other stress-reduction programmes failed to achieve the same results in lowering blood pressure.

Said Schneider : “We wanted to see what was effective and what was not effective among the stress-reduction programmes. Non-drug therapies are recommended [as the first step in] lowering blood pressure. Drug therapy is the second line of treatment.”

The stress-reduction programmes reviewed included “simple biofeedback, relaxation-assisted biofeedback, progressive muscle relaxation and stress management training”. In biofeedback, the person undergoing treatment is shown indicators of his or her blood pressure, pulse, skin temperature and other physiological signs in real time so that they can try to control them. Like meditation, biofeedback is a mind-body therapy.

Education director for the Heart and Stroke Foundation South Africa, Shân Biesman-Simons, said: “Many people find Transcendental Meditation a means of stress reduction and this may improve their risk profile [for cardiovascular disease].” The foundation encourages people to follow a healthy lifestyle to help prevent and manage risk factors including hypertension.

Biesman-Simons said: “This includes not smoking, following a healthy balanced diet, achieving and maintaining a healthy weight, being physically active and managing stress.” Hypertension, known as high blood pressure, affects about a quarter of all South Africans 15 years and older.

Schneider said: “South Africa . .. does not only have high rates of hypertension but also of psychological and sociopolitical stress. We think it is very important to institute stress-reduction programmes and this could start in school. Every school has a programme for physical education, and it would also be good to have mind-body education to promote complete health and wellness.”

Nigel Kahn, a TM teacher based in Cape Town, said he and his colleagues would like to roll out a TM teaching programme in high schools. “It is a simple, preventative tool against heart disease,” he said. “TM is an effortless technique that brings deep rest for both the mind and body, which we practise for 15 to 20 minutes twice a day. The relaxation is a by-product of this deep rest. “It is easier than other techniques of meditation as it does not involve concentration or effort. It is non-religious and requires no change in lifestyle.”

Life & Style > Health & Fitness > Story

04/14/2008 Transcendental meditation is an effective treatment for controlling high blood pressure with the added benefit of bypassing possible side effects and hazards of anti-hypertension drugs.

University of Kentucky researchers looked into several controlled studies of transcendental meditation being used for patients with high blood pressure. The reductions were enough to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease without drugs, says Dr. James W. Anderson, professor of medicine at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.

The findings reinforce earlier studies that have found transcendental meditation produces a statistically significant reduction in high blood pressure that was not found with many other forms of relaxation. "Adding transcendental meditation is about equivalent to adding a second anti-hypertension agent to one's current regimen only safer and less troublesome," Anderson said.