A stress reduction program using Transcendental Meditation (TM) significantly reduced the composite endpoint of mortality, myocardial infarction, and stroke in African-American patients with coronary heart disease, researchers reported.
Compared with a group of patients randomized to a health education program, those practicing TM had a 48% reduction in these outcomes (HR 0.52, 95% CI 0.29 to 0.92, P=0.025), according to Robert H. Schneider, MD, of Maharishi University of Management in Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa, and colleagues.
The TM group also had a change of −4.9 mm Hg in systolic blood pressure (95% CI −8.3 to −1.5 , P=0.01), the researchers reported online in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
"Reduction in systolic BP may be a physiological mechanism for reduced clinical events in this trial since this magnitude of reduction has been associated with 15% reduction in cardiovascular clinical events," Schneider and colleagues wrote.
African Americans are disproportionately afflicted with cardiovascular disease, at least in part possibly because of environmental and psychosocial stresses.
The TM program involves daily periods during which individuals sit quietly allowing the mind to drift into a "wakeful hypometabolic state," which is characterized by physiologic changes typical of decreased stress.
14/11/2012 : By Nancy Walsh / Med Page Today.
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