Transcendental Meditation allows practitioners to prevent the development of heart disease by lowering cholesterol and to manage current heart disease symptoms like atherosclerosis.

The practice works well alone and provides an additional health support to individuals who choose to focus on dietary choices, exercise, and other complementary treatments as a way to prevent or manage heart disease. Transcendental Meditation offers an accessible and effective way to manage risk factors and prevent heart disease. The practice of Transcendental Meditation must be learned from a certified instructor. It requires the practitioner to meditate twice a day for twenty minutes during each sitting. Once mastered, the technique may be practiced in almost any setting.

Transcendental Meditation and Atherosclerosis

People who practice transcendental meditation experience lower instances of atherosclerosis, the hardening of the arteries associated with heart disease. When practicing transcendental meditation, the thickness of the carotid artery lessened in regular meditators.

This is significant because the thickness of the carotid artery walls is used as an indicator for heart disease risk. Several other conditions have been found to correlate with the risk of developing atherosclerosis and heart disease. The presence of insulin resistance, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and tobacco use strongly influence the risk level for developing atherosclerosis. Transcendental Meditation effectively treats each of these causal conditions. Transcendental Meditation has been shown to lower blood pressure; it lowers both the systolic and diastolic blood pressures. The systolic blood pressure indicates a person’s likelihood of experiencing a stroke. This meditation method also lowers insulin resistance, which influences the development of high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, and diabetes.

Can Transcendental Meditation Work On Its Own?

While genetics and behaviors, dietary choices, weight management and level of physical activity, significantly impact the probability of developing heart disease, transcendental meditation has proven effective as a sole form of treatment.The risk factors for heart disease develop within the body’s metabolic systems. According to James Krag, M.D., a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, our state of mind and the physical markers, which accompany various psychic and emotional states, impact metabolism.

The way a meal is consumed when agitated is metabolized by the body is vastly different from the way we metabolize food when happy or calm. Transcendental Meditation produces a state of calm that can always be with us, which allows for healthier metabolism of food and everything else we encounter in the world. One study showed Transcendental Meditation effective in reducing the risk for mortality, myocardial infarction, and stroke in heart disease patients due to reductions in blood pressure and a decrease in psychosocial stress factors. This makes TM a great complementary therapy for cardiovascular disease patients and as a preventive treatment.

Recommendations

Transcendental Meditation “is associated with a decrease in blood pressure and improved neuro-physiological integration and endocrine integration.”

These benefits occur through the practice of transcendental meditation alone. The other recommended methods, healthy diet, exercise, and supplementation, to manage risk factors for heart disease as well as the condition, work well in concert with the practice of TM, but they are not required to benefit from the practice itself. Current studies show the effectiveness of transcendental meditation as a complementary treatment for heart disease and its prevention. Transcendental meditation provides a very simple and beneficial method to manage heart disease risk factors and prevent the development of the condition. By sitting for twenty minutes twice a day and applying TM practices and techniques, a person may significantly decrease their risk factors, hypertension, stress, insulin resistance, high cholesterol, and others while improving their overall health and wellbeing.