Health News: Top Stories

Meditation may cut heart disease death
by Salynn Boyles

Fox News Translate This Article
3 May 2005

On 3 May 2005 Fox News reported: 'Want to live longer? Good genes, plenty of exercise, and eating right should help, but you might also want to sit down, close your eyes . . .' The Transcendental Meditation Programme is on its way to becoming a mainstream recommendation for maintaining good health as another study on the technique's benefits gains worldwide publicity for extending lifespan. It is a joy for Global Good News service to feature this news, which indicates the success of the life-supporting programmes Maharishi has designed to bring fulfilment to the field of health.

Fox News went on to note that more and more evidence supports the idea that meditation 'is not only good for the soul, but for the body as well' and remarked that the mental technique has been accepted by Western medicine as an effective tool for 'lowering stress, reducing chronic pain, and even lowering blood pressure'.

The article then described the study recently published in the Journal of American Cardiology. The study followed a group of 202 elderly men and women over a period of 18 years. Fox News reported that the group that practised the Trancendental Meditation Programme had a 30 per cent decrease in the rate of deaths due to heart disease and stroke and a 50 per cent decrease in deaths due to cancer&mdashalthough the number of deaths from cancers within the overall group was not large enough for this to be a statistically significant finding.

The article quoted Robert H Schneider, MD, of the Maharishi University Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, from an interview he did with WebMD. Dr Schneider said that one important finding in the study was that the Trancendental Meditation Technique appeared to be as effective at preventing deaths from heart disease as drug therapy.

'None of the conventionally recommended non-drug treatments for hypertension, such as salt restriction, exercise, and even weight loss, have been proven to have an impact on deaths from heart disease,' he said. 'This is the first time that I am aware of that any non-drug treatment has been shown to do this.'

Fox News then went on to look at the issue of whether or not the specific kind of meditation practised made a difference in the results. Schneider emphasized his feelings that numerous research studies have given solid evidence in support of the the fact that 'TM conveys mortality advantages that other forms of meditation don't'.

Although Fox News interviewed other experts who disagreed, the article cited two studies, one led by Charles N. Alexander, PhD, and the other by Schneider, which compared various types of intervention, including three kinds of meditation. In both studies, the TM group showed the most improvement.
Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based—Total Knowledge based—programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.

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