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Natural Law Party calls on Health Secretary to include Transcendental Meditation in government's new scheme to cut heart disease

Dr Robert Schneider, co-author of new study showing Transcendental Meditation to be as effective as medication in tackling heart disease - available for interview in London on Thursday afternoon, 9 March 2000 Please telephone: 0171 376 9715 or 07710 417895

A new study published in the March issue of the American Heart Association journal Stroke has shown that learning to relax and reduce stress through the practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM), as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, may reduce atherosclerosis and the risk of heart attack and stroke. This is the first controlled study to suggest that stress reduction by itself can reduce atherosclerosis, according to a team of researchers from UCLA, Charles R Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, and Maharishi University of Management's College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine in Fairfield, Iowa.

The subjects of the study, which was supported by a US government grant, were a group of hypertensive African Americans who were at risk for cardiovascular disease (African Americans were chosen as subjects because they are twice as likely as whites to die from the illness). The study found an impressive decrease in the level of fatty substances deposited on the arterial walls of the subjects who learned TM. Based on previous clinical observations, their risk of heart attack would be reduced by approximately 11% and the risk of stroke by 8-15%. These results were achieved without any change in diet and exercise. This reduction is comparable to that achieved by the latest lipid-lowering drugs.

Robert Schneider, MD, co-author of the study and director of the NIH-sponsored Center for Natural Medicine and Prevention (CNMP) at the College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine, states: "Cardiovascular disease is associated with psychological stress. Previous research has found that the TM programme decreases coronary heart disease risk factors, including hypertension, oxidised lipids, stress hormones and psychological stress, and is associated with reduced cardiovascular disease and death in African Americans and the general population. (Further details see website www.mum.edu/CNMP/)

"Taken together, these and other findings suggest that the distinct state of 'restful alertness' experienced during the TM technique may be triggering self-repair homeostatic mechanisms in the body, which lead to the regression of atherosclerosis," says Dr Schneider. Hector Myers, PhD, co-author of the study and Professor of Psychology at UCLA and Professor of Psychiatry at Drew University, is overseeing three follow-up studies, also sponsored by the US government's National Institutes of Health.

Dr Geoffrey Clements, leader of the Natural Law Party, commented: "When Health Secretary Alan Milburn announced the Government's new plan this week to cut heart disease in the UK by 40% within 10 years, he emphasised that the achievement of this objective is as much about prevention as cure. This new research shows how valuable a prevention-oriented approach can be, not only to achieve results, but to do so cost-effectively and without the damaging side-effects of modern drugs.

"The government talks about the importance of prevention, but in practice less than 1% of the NHS budget is spent on prevention. This is a very unfortunate situation when we consider that published studies indicate that prevention-oriented natural health care could reduce disease by over 50% within five years." (Study details available on request.)

DECREASED INCIDENCE OF DISEASE A study of health insurance statistics on over 2,000 people practising Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation programme over a five-year period found that participants required much less medical treatment in all 16 major disease categories. Psychosomatic Medicine, 49 (1987): 493-507.