Transcendental Meditation for Heart Failure?

African Americans are disproportionately affected by chronic congestive heart failure. It progresses more rapidly than in Caucasians, and the death rate is higher. This appears to be due to higher levels of psychosocial stress in black subjects. The NIH Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine decided to sponsor a study to this concept, which was conducted at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; the results are published in the journal Ethnicity & Disease.

Transcendental meditation (TM) was used as the stress-reducer. Twenty-three African American men and women, average age 64, who had been recently hospitalized with congestive heart failure, were randomly allocated to a TM program, or a health education program, as controls. They all continued with their standard heart failure medication. After 3 and 6 months the TM patients had improved in several respects compared with the controls: the 6-minute walk test, a quality-of-life scale (the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure scale), a depression scale, and the number of hospitalizations.

The health benefits of TM have been demonstrated in numerous studies, and it has a prominent place in many aspects of stress-induced conditions in daily living. Have a look at the Maharishi’s website to find out more; you may even want to try it out for yourself. It can’t hurt, and may help you a lot.