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Recent Research Confirms Value of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Fighting Heart Disease
The prevention-oriented approach of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is strongly supported by Dr. John Hagelin and his Institute. However, critics of government funding for CAM often charge that this approach has little or no rigorous research support and therefore should not be used along with “evidence-based” medicine. Now, however, prestigious journals are beginning to publish the research results of well-designed CAM clinical trials, and certain CAM approaches are gaining increasing acceptance among doctors.
The April 15th issue of The American Journal of Cardiology featured research showing that the thickening of blood vessel walls known as atherosclerosis or “hardening of the arteries,” a major risk factor for heart attack and stroke, was reversed by a multimodality natural medicine approach. The researchers made use of Maharishi Vedic Medicine (MVM), an integrated, holistic approach that includes the use of diet, routine, herbs and the daily practice of the Transcendental Meditation® technique.
“Our study of generally healthy seniors, including a subgroup at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, suggests that the treatment program of Maharishi Vedic Medicine significantly reversed atherosclerosis,” says Jeremy Fields, Ph.D., lead author of the study and Research Coordinator for the Center for Healthy Aging at Saint Joseph Hospital in Chicago, Illinois.
“The present research supports targeting multiple risk factors as an effective approach to preventing heart attack and death from coronary heart disease,” says Robert Schneider, M.D., coauthor of the study and Director of the Center for Natural Medicine and Prevention, one of 16 centers of specialized research supported by the National Institutes of Health.
“However, unlike other non-drug approaches, the MVM treatment does not require radical changes in lifestyle. This represents a breakthrough in treatment of atherosclerosis because it not only suggests that a traditional, non-drug, natural medicine approach may regress cardiovascular disease, but that this program is one that ordinary people can do,” says Schneider.
According to Reuters News Service, the study randomly assigned twenty healthy individuals age 65 and over to the Maharishi Vedic Medicine intervention, fourteen to usual care, and nine to a modern medicine intervention. On average, the thickness of artery walls in the MVM group was reduced by 0.318 mm, compared with a 0.22 mm increase in the usual care subgroup and a 0.082 mm decrease in the modern medicine subgroup.
Reuters quoted Dr. Schneider as saying, “This approach also appears to be more acceptable to patients because its dietary restrictions are not ‘radical’ and the level of exercise is one with which they can easily comply.” Schneider noted that the diet limits fat, but also includes “medicinal foods or health-promoting foods.”
The Washington Post reported on April 22nd that James S. Gordon, a psychiatrist, director of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, and former chairman of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy, had commented that he was impressed that the MVM study tested an “integrated” treatment approach rather than simply looking at meditation or diet or exercise by itself.
The study was funded by the Retirement Research Foundation and the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
For WebMD’s report on this research, go to:
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/1675.57356
For Atlanta's NBC News report on this research, go to:
http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.asp?storyID=16052
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