The study was small, but its results were encouraging. Meditation may prove to be a beneficial addition to lifestyle and/or medical approaches to heart disease, say Frank Treiber, PhD, and colleagues.
Treiber directs the Georgia Prevention Institute at the Medical College of Augusta. He and his colleagues reported their findings in Orlando, Fla., at the Second International Conference on Women, Heart Disease, and Stroke.
Participants were 36 black females who were about 16 years old. All of them had high to normal systolic blood pressure (prehypertension). That increased their risk of future heart disease.
The girls were assigned to either get four months of training in transcendental meditation (TM) or health education without meditation. Before the groups got underway, researchers checked the pliability of a blood vessel wall in the girls‘ arms. Studies have shown that African-Americans have decrease pliability of blood vessels. TM has been shown to improve this function in young people with prehypertension.
Normal healthy blood vessels contract and expand; a very early sign of blood vessel disease is when this ability is impaired. A decrease in blood vessels‘ ability to contract and expand is seen in high blood pressure. (More)
Source: Onlinenews.com
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