If you have, or are at risk for, heart disease, your doctor may prescribe diet, exercise, medications and...transcendental meditation? This ancient technique reduced blood pressure and insulin resistance and improved heart tone in recent research by C. Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., medical director of the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, in collaboration with Maharishi University of Management in Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa.

Personal instruction was provided to participants for several hours per week; a control group received only health education. The results show both the effects of stress on the heart and how useful changing one’s response to stress can be. Although other studies have found meditation to be beneficial for the heart, this is the first study to show that it may also protect against type 2 diabetes.

Source: Archives of Internal Medicine, 2006.

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