Just Say Om - Brief Article

A mere 40 minutes of Transcendental Meditation (TM) a day could keep the heart surgeon away, according to a study published in the March issue of the American Heart Association journal, Stroke. Researchers from the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles and the College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine in Fairfield, Iowa, found that Transcendental Meditation alone--without changes in diet or exercise--reduced blood vessel blockage.

To test the potentially artery-saving effects of TM, a technique that involves repeating a mantra (sort of like a secret Sanskrit password) to achieve total relaxation, researchers studied African-Americans, who are 50 percent more likely to suffer from heart disease than Caucasians and four to five times more likely to die from a stroke. Half the 60 participants, all of whom had high blood pressure, learned and practiced TM, while the other half only received instruction on diet and exercise.

At the beginning and end of the six-month study, researchers measured the wall thickness of participants' carotid arteries, which supply blood to the head. While the diet and exercise group experienced a slight thickening on average, the TM group's arteries walls actually decreased in thickness by an average of .098 millimeters, corresponding to an 11 percent decrease in heart attack risk and a 7 to 15 percent decrease in the risk for stroke.

Learning TM (a registered trademark of the Maharishi Vedic Education Development Corporation) is certainly cheaper than a double-bypass, but with training courses ranging from $230 to $575, it's still no bargain. While practitioners swear by it, there may be other, less expensive ways to achieve a heart-healthy state of relaxation. Herbert Benson, M.D., president of the Mind/Body Medicine Institute in Boston and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, has been studying the effects of various meditation techniques on hypertensive patients for decades. "We have produced the same physiological changes as TM using techniques involving the repetition of a word, a sound, a prayer or a phrase," Benson says.

Though TM does seem to reduce heart disease risk, researchers think building public confidence in it will be a challenge. "It is always difficult to be taken seriously," said Amparo Castillo-Richmond, M.D., lead author of the study and an assistant professor of medicine at Maharishi. "Americans may not believe that a change in something you do in your head ends up affecting something as tangible as an artery that could give you a heart attack."

COPYRIGHT 2000 Sabot Publishing
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group