Research: Validation by Modern Science

Blood pressure:

A randomised controlled study of 100 African-American adolescents with high normal systolic blood pressure (50 in the TM group and 50 in the control group), using ambulatory 24 hour BP measures, showed that over a 4 month period the TM group had significantly reduced daytime systolic and diastolic BP than the control group. American Journal of Hypertension 2004; 17(4): 366-369.
A 4 month, randomised, controlled, study of 39 normotensive male subjects (randomly assigned to practice either the Transcendental Meditation technique or a cognitive-based stress education control) showed that although there was no change in cardiovascular response to stressors between the TM and control groups, the subjects regularly practicing TM had a significant reduction of 9 mm Hg (p < .04) in average ambulatory diastolic BP compared to controls. Since ambulatory BP monitoring has been shown to be a better predictor of cardiovascular complications of hypertension than clinic BP, this finding may have important implications for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease in normotensive subjects. International Journal of Neuroscience 1997; 89(1-2):15-28.
A 3 month, randomised, controlled, single blind study of 127 African Americans (>=55 years old) with mild to moderate hypertension compared the effects of the Transcendental Meditation technique and progressive muscle relaxation with a life-style modification education control and with each other. It showed that TM significantly reduced BP by 11/7 mmHg and that TM was twice as effective as progressive muscular relaxation in reducing BP. Hypertension 1995; 26(5): 820-827.
This study was further analysed by subgroups determined by sex and by high and low risk on six measures of hypertension risk: psychosocial stress, obesity, alcohol use, physical inactivity, dietary sodium-potassium ratio, and a composite measure. For the measure of psychosocial stress, the TM technique resulted in significant decline in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure, which effect was more pronounced in the high risk psychosocial stress subgroup, whereas for muscle relaxation, blood pressure dropped significantly only in the high risk subgroup and only for systolic pressure compared with control subjects. For each of the other five risk measures, TM subjects in both the high and low risk groups declined significantly in systolic and diastolic pressures compared with control subjects - which effect was significantly greater for TM group when compared with the muscle relaxation group. Effects of stress reduction on blood pressure were found to generalise to both sexes. Hypertension 1996; 28(2): 228-237.