Transcendental Meditation Strengthens Heart Health in Women of All Ages

There are many choices a woman can make to protect her heart health and possibly the most powerful of these is to learn and regularly practice the Transcendental Meditation technique. It’s estimated that 80% of heart disease, including heart attacks and strokes, can be prevented through lifestyle changes. 

Learning Transcendental Meditation creates a strong foundation for the success of these lifestyle hacks in a woman’s life:

• Maintain a healthy weight. The Transcendental Meditation technique reduces impulsive behaviors, decreasing the likelihood of bad habits such as binge-eating.
• Eat a heart-healthy diet. TM enhances mental clarity, making it easier to weigh options and make well-considered decisions
• Exercise regularly. The TM program increases energy, mind-body coordination, and endurance. It promotes a faster recovery from stress, fatigue and the side-effects of strenuous activity.
• Reduce alcohol. Several studies indicate TM’s success in reducing alcohol consumption. A comparative analysis published in Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly revealed that the effect of Transcendental Meditation on alcohol consumption was 2 to 4 times greater than all other methods in the study. (p=.009).The effect of TM on “serious users” was even stronger.
• Stop smoking and vaping: A meta-analysis of 131 studies on smoking cessation methods, including pharmacology, individual counseling, self-help kits and unconventional treatments, showed the TM technique to be at least twice as effective.
• Move more: It’s healthier to move throughout the day, so interrupt long periods of sitting. The TM practice reduces fatigue, allowing you to “get up and go!”.
• Decrease stress: There’s overwhelming evidence that indicates stress has a detrimental impact on heart health. As decades of published research has shown, the TM technique is an immediate, highly effective stress-buster.
• Be alert to all risk factors and consult a doctor. Fortunately, research on the Transcendental Meditation program indicates that TM decreases the appearance and impact of most heart health risk factors. Read Here.

Younger women are also vulnerable

Heart attacks are observed to be increasing in adult women younger than 54 years of age. Although heart attacks in the age bracket of 18 to 44 are rare, they have increased more than 66% since 2019. This is partly because of lifestyle changes beginning during the Covid pandemic and partly due to rIsk factors for heart disease being more common now at these ages than in the past.

The TM practice can reverse or reduce atherosclerosis, cholesterol, chronic stress, depression, hypertension and smoking among other causes of heart disease.This broad range of benefit is not found with other self-care routines: Dr. Abe Bornstein, MD, FACC, Fellow of the NY Academy of Medicine’s Division of Evidence-Based Medicine, stated, “These findings cannot be generalized to all meditation and stress reduction techniques.”

C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, is the director of the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center and medical director of the Preventive Cardiology Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She agrees that unhealthy lifestyle trends, such as insufficient diet and exercise, smoking and the more modern habit of vaping, contribute to the spiking numbers of heart ailments in young women.

Young women are increasingly being diagnosed with hypertension, but learning the TM technique can help. Bairey Merz was a co-researcher in a study published in 2006 that demonstrated that TM can lead to significant reductions in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Afterwards, the American Heart Association released a  statement that the TM technique lowers high blood pressure and that there was insufficient evidence at that time on other forms of meditation.

Dr. Bairey Merz commented, “We are gratified that our research demonstrating the efficacy of Transcendental Meditation on blood pressure is being recognized and hope that this consensus will result in its wider use in clinical practice.”

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