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Research on Health Benefits
of Meditation
Several forms of meditation have been divested of their
spiritual and religious elements and explored as a way
of reducing stress on both mind and body. Over 1000 research
studies, most of them published in peer reviewed scientific
journals, attest to a wide range of measurable improvements
in human functioning and reduction in symptomatology
as a result of meditative practices.
Studies have found that regular meditation is associated
with reductions in health care use; increases in longevity
and quality of life. In experimental studies, meditation
has been found to reduce chronic pain; reduce anxiety;
reduce high blood pressure; reduce serum cholesterol
level; reduce substance abuse; increase intelligence
related measures; reduce post traumatic stress syndrome
in Vietnam veterans; and lower blood cortisol levels
initially brought on by stress. Finding references for
the summary statements below is one of the exercise below.
Stress
During the past 30 years, numerous studies have established
that meditation is highly beneficial to health. Dr. Benson's
research showed meditation
 lowers
oxygen consumption
decreases respiratory
rate
increases blood flow
slows the heart rate
leads to a deep level
of relaxation
decreases blood pressure
in people who have normal or mildly elevated pressure
lowers levels of
blood lactate (associated with anxiety)
Muscle Tension
Numerous studies have shown a decrease in muscle tension during meditation.
In some studies, the decrease in muscle tension as a result of meditation
even exceeded the impressive effects of biofeedback training.
Pain
Meditation has also been shown to aid in the alleviation
of pain. Sstudies on chronic pain patients have been
conducted by John Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., the founder and
Director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University
of Massachusetts Medical Center, and Associate Professor
of Medicine in the Division of Preventative and Behavioral
Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Kabat-Zinn and his program were featured on the American
public television (PBS) series Healing and the Mind,
with Bill Moyers. Dr. Kabat-Zinn's studies have demonstrated
decreases in many kinds of pain in people who had been
unresponsive to standard medical treatment. A large majority
of the patients in Kabat-ZinnÕs studies who were
taught to meditate improved, while control groups of
similar patients showed no significant improvement. Various
related studies have shown improvement in pain from muscle
tension, headaches, dysmenorrhea, and other conditions.
Brainwaves and Brain Functioning
Studies have shown an increase in alpha wave rhythms, which are correlated
with a state of relaxed alertness. In addition, studies have shown enhanced
synchronization of alpha rhythms among four regions of the brain--right, left,
front, and back.Some consider this to indicate increased coherence of brain-wave
activity. There are also studies that meditation improves mind-body coordination,
as indicated by enhanced visual sensitivity to light flashes, response to auditory
stimuli, and ability to remember and discriminate musical tones.
Online Research
Summaries
 Annotated Bibliography of Scientific research on TM
 Meditation
May Add Support During Cancer Treatment WebMD article
Medline Research
Abstracts
The National
Library of Medicine (NLM) is the premier source
of health science research information in the world.
To make research information as accessible as possible,
NLM has put the Medline electronic database online.
The online version is called PubMed and is free to
the public. Medline contains more than 11 million
records dating back to 1963. Although the full text
of each article is not in the database, approximately
60 percent of the citations contain author-generated
abstracts or summaries of the articles.Currently, there
are 25 main headings in MEDLINE under the term alternative
medicine. Meditation is a MeSH (Medical Subject Heading)
term listed under the heading relaxation techniques
.Below are just a few examples of the hundreds of studies
on meditation in clinical practice.
Miller
JJ, Fletcher K, Kabat-Zinn J, Three-year follow-up and clinical implications of a mindfulness
meditation-based stress reduction intervention in the
treatment of anxiety disorders. Gen Hosp Psychiatry
1995 May;17(3):192-200
iCastillo-Richmond A, Schneider
RH, Alexander CN, Cook R, Myers H, Nidich S, Haney C, Rainforth M, Salerno
J. Effects of stress reduction on carotid atherosclerosis
in hypertensive African Americans. Stroke. 2000 Mar;31(3):568-73
Herron RE, Hillis
SL. The impact of the transcendental meditation program on
government payments to physicians in Quebec: an update. Am J Health
Promot. 2000 May-Jun;14(5):284-91
 QUIZ
EXERCISE 5:
Follow-up of Patients Treated with Meditation
Long term follow up of patients treated for
anxiety with meditation showed a) Little compliance
or long term symptom reduction b) Good compliance
but no long term symptom reduction c) Little
compliance but long term symptom reduction
d) Good compliance and long term symptom reduction.
Record your answer for later insertion into
the Quiz. |
QUIZ
EXERCISE 6:
Meditation in Treatment
Meditation has been used successfully to
control the symptoms of all these disorders
except: a) anxiety disorder b) pain disorder
c) high blood pressure d) schizophrenia
Record your answer for later insertion into
the Quiz. |
QUEST
EXERCISES 7 and 8:
Meditation on PubMed
7. Go to the PubMed search page and conduct a search for
meditation articles. Enter the keyword meditation
into the box after Search for and then click
on Go. You should get over 700 links citations
to articles on meditation.
Record one article title as your answer for
later insertion into the quiz.
8: Conduct a Boolean search for meditation
articles on one of the health benefits described
above by adding a term such as pain or anxiety.
Enter meditation pain. You do not need to add
and between the terms. PubMed will find all
articles that address meditation for the treatment
of pain.
Record one article title as your answer for
later insertion into the Quiz. |
 he
NCCAM and The National Library of Medicine (NLM) have
partnered to create CAM on PubMed, a special subset of
the NLM's free online Medline database. When you
click on the CAM on PubMed logo, your literature search
will automatically be limited to the CAM subset of PubMed.
QUEST
EXERCISE 9:
CAM on PubMed
Conduct a search for meditation research
articles by clicking on the CAM on PubMed icon
above and then entering the keyword meditation
into the box after Search for and then click
on Go. You should get over 700 citations to
research articles on meditation.
Record one article title as your answer for
later insertion into the Quiz. |
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