When you think about meditation, you undoubtedly think about peace, tranquility, calm and a sense of wellbeing. It is something that people most frequently associate with mental wellness and serenity, rather than considering it to have any kind of physical benefit.
Recent research, however, has shown that meditation can be extremely beneficial for cardio/heart health. Getting into a state of relaxed meditation can be good for you as it helps to calm you down and this, in turn, lowers your blood pressure.
Carried out at the Centre for Natural Medicine and Prevention, based in Fairfield, Iowa, the study involved 200 patients. Researchers were amazed to note that patients who were at high risk of heart attacks, death and strokes actually cut their risk as much as 50 percent purely by meditating.
This is the first time that a clinical study has proved that meditation, when practised long term, actually has beneficial effects as part of a stress reduction programme, and can indeed reduce the risk of falling victim to one of these devastating diseases that are linked to high blood pressure.
During the study, 100 of the patients took up meditation and only 20 of them suffered from heart attacks, strokes or died as the result of high blood pressure. This was opposed to the control group, where out of 100 patients, 32 of them fell victim to these same fates.
Another similar study was carried out using college students, and in this case it was found that students who meditated suffered lower levels of stress and were at a decreased risk of having high blood pressure.
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