Transcendental meditation may reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and deaths in African-American heart disease patients who practiced the technique for 20 minutes a day a new study reveals.
"We hypothesized that reducing stress by managing the mind-body connection would help improve rates of this epidemic disease," said Robert Schneider, M.D., lead researcher and director of the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention in Fairfield, Iowa. "It appears that transcendental meditation is a technique that turns on the body's own pharmacy -- to repair and maintain itself."
The process, which involves focusing on a sound or mantra, was used in a clinical trial where heart patients who were randomly assigned to practice meditation every day for five years were 48 percent less likely to die or have a heart attack or stroke compared with their counterparts who took a health education class.
"This taps into a universal physical phenomenon that is not related to race, age, culture, etc.," Schneider says. "This state of restful alertness has restorative benefits for everyone. It's a way to utilize the body's own internal pharmacy."
Transcendental meditation has been around since the 1950s and was developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and has been adopted by a number of celebrities including Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, and Clint Eastwood.
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