| Maharishi University of Management |
March 3, 2000
PRESS RELEASE
Stress reduction through the Transcendental
Meditation program
may reduce atherosclerosis and risk of heart attack and
stroke
Source: American Heart Association journal Stroke 31:568-573, 2000
Learning to relax and reduce stress through the practice of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique may reduce atherosclerosis--and risk of heart attack and stroke--according to findings published today in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.
This is the first controlled study to suggest that stress reduction by itself can reduce atherosclerosis without changes in diet and exercise, according to a team of researchers from UCLA and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles and Maharishi University of Management (M.U.M.) College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine in Fairfield, Iowa.
"This finding that the disease process in the arteries can be reduced through the TM program may have vast implications for the current management of cardio- vascular disease and health care costs," says Amparo Castillo-Richmond, M.D., lead author of the study and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine.
Atherosclerosis is the hardening of the arteries accompanied by the buildup of fat deposits in the artery walls. It leads to cardiovascular disease (CVD), the number one cause of death for all Americans. CVD is particularly lethal to African Americans, who are twice as likely to die from the illness as whites.
The study was supported by a grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and was conducted at Drew University in collaboration with the M.U.M. Center for Natural Medicine and Prevention.
Hypertensive African Americans who were at risk for cardiovascular disease were randomly assigned to the Transcendental Meditation program or to a health education control group. Sixty men and women volunteers completed pretests and posttests over an average intervention period of about seven months. The level of fatty substances deposited on participants' arterial walls, or carotid intima-media thickness (IMT), was evaluated by ultrasound. IMT is a widely used surrogate measure of coronary atherosclerosis and a predictor of heart attack and stroke.
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