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Senior Citizen Health & Medicine
Meditation May Improve Cardiac Risks in Patients
with Coronary Heart Disease
 June 13, 2006 - A relaxation technique known as
transcendental meditation may decrease blood pressure and reduce insulin
resistance among patients with coronary heart disease, according to a
report in the June 12 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, one of
the JAMA/Archives journals.
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Health & Medicine |
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Transcendental meditation, derived from the ancient
Vedic tradition in India, is taught through a standard protocol
involving lectures, personal instruction and group meetings, according
to background information in the article.
It has previously been shown to lower blood
pressure but its effect on other risk factors associated with coronary
heart disease, including those linked to the metabolic syndrome, has not
been thoroughly examined. The metabolic syndrome refers to a cluster of
symptoms that increase cardiac risk, including high blood pressure
(hypertension), abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and insulin
resistance, which occurs when the body is unable to use the insulin
produced by the pancreas to process sugar into energy.
Maura Paul-Labrador, M.P.H., Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center, Los Angeles, and colleagues conducted a 16-week trial of
transcendental meditation in patients with coronary heart disease.
Fifty-two participants (average age 67.7 years)
were instructed in transcendental meditation and 51 control patients
(average age 67.1 years) received health education. At the beginning and
end of the trial, the patients fasted overnight and then gave a blood
sample, participated in a medical history review and underwent tests of
blood vessel function and heart rate variability.
Heart rate variability testing assesses the
functioning of the autonomic nervous system, which controls the heart
and other involuntary muscles.
Overall, of the 103 participants who were enrolled,
84 (82 percent) completed the study. At the end of the trial, patients
in the transcendental meditation group had significantly lower blood
pressure; improved fasting blood glucose and insulin levels, which
signify reduced insulin resistance; and more stable functioning of the
autonomic nervous system.
"These physiological effects were accomplished
without changes in body weight, medication or psychosocial variables and
despite a marginally statistically significant increase in physical
activity in the health education group," the authors write.
"These current results also expand our causal
understanding of the role of stress in the rising epidemic of the
metabolic syndrome," they continue.
"Although current low levels of physical activity,
unhealthy eating habits and resultant obesity are triggers for this
epidemic, the demands of modern society may also be responsible for
higher levels of chronic stress."
Such stress causes the release of cortisol and
other hormones and neurotransmitters, which over time damage the
cardiovascular system.
"Our results, demonstrating beneficial
physiological effects of transcendental meditation in the absence of
effects on psychosocial variables, suggest that transcendental
meditation may modulate response to stress rather than alter the stress
itself, similar to the physiological impact of exercise conditioning,"
the authors write.
This method of controlling the body's response to
stress may provide a new target for the treatment and prevention of
coronary heart disease, warranting further study, they conclude.
Editor's Note: This study was supported by grants
from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine,
National Institutes of Health; and a General Clinical Research Centers
grant from the National Center for Research Resources.
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