Meditation Can Help Reduce Blood Pressure - Study

Meditation has many positive effects to one's health and overall well-being. Previously, Latinos Post has reported that mindfulness meditation can help people quit smoking. Now, a new study added more to its increasing number of benefits, suggesting that meditation can help reduce blood pressure.

The study published at PLOS One revealed that Transcendental Meditation can help the body stimulate the genes which produces an enzyme called telomerase, which is associated with the decrease of blood pressure.

WebMD described Transcendental Meditation as a technique for "avoiding distraction." It cited that during meditation, the person doing Transcendental Meditation sits in comfortable position with eyes closed and continuously repeats a mantra or a "meaningless sound," that has been assigned by a certified instructor.

In order to reach the aforementioned conclusion, the researchers examined 48 African American men and women with stage I hypertension. The volunteers agreed to participate in stress reduction through Transcendental Meditation and a basic health education course or an Extensive Health Education (EHE) program for 16 weeks.

After the 16 week trial, the researchers determined that both Transcendental Meditation, accompanied with basic health education, and EHE, resulted in an increase of "telomerase gene expression" as well as a reduction in blood pressure.

"The finding that telomerase gene expression is increased, and that this is associated with a reduction in blood pressure in a high-risk population, suggests that this may be a mechanism by which stress reduction improves cardiovascular health," Dr. Robert Schneider, head researcher and director of the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, IA, said via Medical News Today (MNT).

In the MNT report, it was also cited that Dr. Schneider mentioned that their discovery is encouraging for prevention, as it gives a solid proof that Transcendental Meditation and "active lifestyle modification" can help in the improvement in heart health.

The researchers, nonetheless, admitted that their study still has its limitations, especially with the fact that they did not use an "inactive control group." Additionally, the researchers pointed that their number of participants is small and the results of their study can either be confirmed or disproved by a study with a larger sample population.

However, the researchers still believe that the results of their study are valuable, especially for the prevention of heart disease and further improvement of heart health.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the US, with about 610,000 people dying from the disease every year.