The age-old relaxation method of transcendental meditation may have a place in the doctor’s office. A new study by California scientists found that meditation kept blood pressure and blood glucose levels lower in heart patients who meditated over a four-month period.
“These were the same kinds of changes we would see with a medication,” said Dr. Noel Bairey Merz, medical director of the Preventive Cardiac Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
More than a decade ago, Merz and colleagues were among the first to describe the adverse effects of stress on the heart. Since then, they have been studying ways to reduce stress.
Several years ago, they decided to study transcendental meditation because it is a time-tested relaxation technique that is taught by certified TM instructors. This makes it easier to study, which helps lessen variability among patient meditators. They recruited 103 patients with established coronary heart disease and randomly assigned them to the TM treatment or to an equal amount of time receiving tutoring in health education.
Throughout the study, they measured blood pressure, blood glucose, insulin resistance and heart-rate variability. The researchers found that those trained to meditate had lower blood pressure and healthier levels of insulin and blood glucose than those who received advice from a health educator. The study appears this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
“This was a surprise,” Merz said. “It suggests that there are mechanisms that regulate blood glucose and insulin that we need to understand better.”
