A 1987 survey conducted by Dr. David Orme Jonson showed that regular meditators are 87.3% less likely to be hospitalized due to heart disease. Meditation can help deal with all the major risk factors associated with heart disease, including:

• Cholesterol

• Hypertension

• Diabetes

• Smoking

• Obesity

• Stress

High Cholesterol Level

High cholesterol level is one of the major predictors of heart attack. Meditation can bring abnormally high cholesterol levels down to normal. In a study conducted in 1970 researchers M J Cooper and M MAygen divided 23 patients with high cholesterol into two groups of 12 and 11. The first group meditated regularly. After 11 months, it was found that the average cholesterol level of the first group had decreased from 255 to 225. (220 is considered normal). No such change was noticed in the control group.

Dr. Bernace, a physiologist from the Medical College of Georgia conducted a study on the 111 young volunteers and concluded that meditation can have the same effect as lipid reducing drugs. He presented a report in the annual conference of American Psychosomatic Society.

High Blood Pressure

Herbert Benson found more than three decades ago that blood pressure decreases during relaxation. Since then, hundreds of studies have shown that various types of meditation help in bringing elevated blood pressure down to normal.

For example, a 1994 study conducted by Lynden and Chambers found that the effect of mind-body treatments- including meditation, was comparable to drug treatments in reducing both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. In another study conducted in 1997, Shapiro found that patients of hypertension who received 6 weeks of progressive muscle relaxation and other cognitive behavioral therapy required much less medicine than those who did not. 3 decades ago, it has been seen in the research of Dr. Herbert Benson – a researcher of Herbert Medical School – that meditation decreases the blood pressure. Later and till now, hundreds of researches stated that meditation reduces blood pressure.

In 2004, a report was published in the American Journal of Hypertension based on a 3 months’ study on 156 volunteers. It was mentioned there that people, who had practiced meditation, experienced remarkable decrease in Systolic and Diastolic, which was far better than the people who had taken special foods and physical exercises or even than the people who had not done anything at all.

In the Bangladeshi physicians' national guidelines for treatment of high blood pressure published in 2013, WHO, the health ministry and National Heart Foundation advises to change lifestyle, practice yoga, deep breathing and meditation.

Diabetes

Plenty of studies have shown that meditation helps bring down the blood glucose (sugar) levels of diabetic patients. For example, in 2008, Thai researcher Chaiopanont did a study with 50 type-2-diabetic patients whom he taught meditation after breakfast. The result revealed that meditation practice and self care help to lower the blood glucose level significantly in type-2-diabetic patients after having meal.

In another study, Rosenzweiq and others (2007) observed the HbA1c (glycosylated hemoglobin) levels in the blood of diabetic patients. HbA1c is glucose-bound hemoglobin found in the blood of diabetic patients due to the excess glucose present in blood. They have seen that meditations do not only decrease the HbA1c level in blood but also normalize the blood pressure. In addition, the study found that meditation causes decrease in depression, anxiety, and general psychological distress which are considered as causative factors for imbalanced glucose control among diabetics.

Smoking

In a study published in 2007, researcher Davis and others of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health conducted a study on the impact of mindfulness meditation on 18 smokers with an average smoking history of 19.9 cigarettes per day for 26.4 years. The participants quit smoking during the program.

Obesity

Several studies have shown that meditation helps develop healthy eating habits. For example, A pilot study of 18 obese women, Jean Chrestler, director of the Center for the Study of Health, Religion and Spirituality at Indiana State University, found that mindfulness meditation helped reduce binges from an average of four per week to one and a half.

Researcher Singh and others found in a study that meditation with exercise and healthy eating habit helps young people with prader-willi syndrome to reduce weight. Prader-willi syndrome is a genetic disorder characterized by excessive eating.

Stress

Stress is one of the major risk factors associated with heart disease. Conventional treatments of heart disease do not include any effective remedy for stress.

Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon discovered 90 years ago that when we are stressed, our blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and breathing rate increases. In 1967, Dr. Herbert Benson, also from Harvard, found that the effect of meditation on our body is exactly opposite – i.e. it lessens our blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension and breathing rate. He wrote a book entitled 'The Relaxation Response' – where he argued that meditators counter acted the stress induced 'fight or flight response' and achieved a calmer, happier state.

Since then, research has proved again and again the meditation is one of the most effective ways to combat stress. Researchers have studied the impact of meditation on the stress levels of different groups of people, including students, critical care nurses, incarcerated people, war veterans etc. and found that meditation helps reduce stress in all these groups.

It has been proved in the research that meditation decreases ‘Oxidative Stress’. For example, a team of experts made an experiment on 60 volunteers in 2006 and in 2008. They applied a new method called ‘Ultra Photon Emission Measurement’ on the volunteers and measured the amount of reactive oxygen in their corpuscles. They found that the people, who did regular meditations, are having less photon radiation in their bodies. Even the rate of oxidative stress is quite less in those cases.