Transcendental meditation may be replacement for blood pressure medications

• Transcendental meditation is an effective alternative to blood pressure-lowering medication, according to the results of a study involving African Americans.
• People may choose to try to lower their blood pressure naturally, "but it matters what you do," study author Dr. Robert H. Schneider of the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa told Reuters Health.
• "You can lower your blood pressure naturally using a particular mind-body technique, transcendental meditation," Schneider said.
• African Americans are known to have disproportionately higher rates of coronary heart disease, stroke and kidney disease than whites.
• The reason for the higher rates of hypertension among blacks is unknown, but reports suggest that psychosocial stress may play a role.
• In the current study, Schneider and his colleagues compared the effects of meditation and two other stress reduction techniques among 150 African-American men and women receiving treatment for high blood pressure.
• Study participants were divided into groups that, along with their usual medical care, participated in 20 minutes of transcendental meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, or conventional health education classes twice daily.
• Men and women who practiced transcendental meditation showed the greatest decreases in blood pressure, decreases that were sustained for over a year, the researchers report in the American Journal of Hypertension.
• The meditation technique also appeared to help decrease study participants' need for blood pressure-lowering medications.
• In contrast, those in the muscle relaxation group and those who participated in the conventional classes used more medication than they had initially, the report indicates.
• Women who practiced the meditation technique had much greater decreases in their total blood pressure than those in the other two groups, whereas men in the meditation group had a greater decrease in diastolic blood pressure -- the lower reading -- only, in comparison to those in the health education classes.