Thursday, November 6, 2008

Transcendental Meditation Can Help Combat Congestive Heart Failure (Transcendental Meditation)

Transcendental Meditation

ScienceDaily (Mar. 13, 2007) — In this high-tech age of modern medicine, could it be possible to treat the leading cause of death in the U.S. through the power of meditation? According to a first-of-its-kind randomized study conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, a widely practiced, stress-reducing meditation technique can significantly reduce the severity of congestive heart failure. The study appears in the Winter 2007 issue of Ethnicity & Disease.

“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” said Ravishankar Jayadevappa, PhD, lead author and Research Assistant Professor in Penn’s Division of Geriatric Medicine. “These results also suggest long-term improvements in survival in these individuals.”

Jayadevappa and fellow researchers from Penn evaluated 23 African American men and women, average age 64, who were recently hospitalized with New York Heart Association class II or III congestive heart failure. Participants were randomized to either the Transcendental Meditation® (TM) technique or health education – in addition to standard medical treatment.

Researchers measured changes in heart function with a six-minute walk test, and measures for quality of life, depression, and re-hospitalizations. Changes in outcomes from baseline to three and six months after treatment were analyzed.

According to Jayadevappa, the TM group significantly improved on the six-minute walk test after both three and six months of TM practice compared to the control group. The TM group also showed improvement in quality of life measurements, depression, and had fewer re-hospitalizations.

This present finding is consistent with previous research demonstrating that Transcendental Meditation reduces factors that contribute to the cause or progression of heart failure, such a high blood pressure, stress, metabolic syndrome, left ventricular hypertrophy (enlargement of the heart) and severity of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). Further validation of the outcomes of this study is planned via a large, multi-center trial with long-term follow-up.

According to the study authors, Transcendental Meditation most likely improves heart failure by reducing sympathetic nervous system activation associated with stress that is known to contribute to the failing heart.

This study was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health-National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, in a collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania with the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at Maharishi University of Management.

Transcendental Meditation

3 comments:

  1. i never had heart problems or high blood pressure but it seems so common these days. TM has been getting a lot of press lately especially about the research on its health benefits. There is a great web site with all the studies: www.doctorsonTM.org Check it out if you like. I have been doing TM for years and I never get colds in the winter like the rest of my family. Its one of the many small blessings I get from it.

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  2. I completely concur with the study from personal experience. I have been practicing TM since I was a child and my blood pressure always was and continues to remain quite low. When I was expecting my first child, in my late thirties, at time when doctors usually watch for high blood pressure, mine became even lower. I attribute this to the benefits of TM.

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  3. We will have to educate them, wait for them to age, or wait for the time, when they can appreciate the meditative aspects of Yoga. If Yoga students were trained to meditate as children, they would appreciate the many benefits of Yoga meditation at this moment. However, we cannot force a person to instantly meditate and "see the light."

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