TRANSCENDENTAL meditation can extend your lifespan, proponents of TM are claiming based on the results of a small study. Independent experts say that while the results are intriguing, the study has too many flaws to be regarded as definitive proof.
Transcendental meditation, or TM, involves repeating a mantra out loud or in your mind to achieve inner peacefulness. Past studies suggest this form of meditation might have long-term health benefits such as lowering blood pressure, although a review in 2004 concluded that the evidence was not conclusive.
But if TM really does lower blood pressure, people might live longer as a result, reasoned Robert Schneider, a doctor at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, which promotes the technique.
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Together with researchers from independent universities, he followed up the fortunes of participants in two earlier TM studies. The studies had randomly assigned older people with moderately high blood pressure to different treatment groups. In one, done in the 1980s, 77 patients in nursing homes were assigned to one of four treatments: TM, mindfulness training, mental relaxation or “usual care”. After three months, systolic blood pressure was lower in the TM group than in the others. In a second study, done in the 1990s, 125 men and women living on their own were randomly assigned to TM, muscle relaxation or health education. Again, the TM group’s blood pressure was lower after three months.
In the latest study, Schneider’s group checked the National Death Index to find out which of the 202 volunteers had died, and what their cause of death was. Half had died, but those who had been in the TM groups were 23 per cent less likely than the others to have died during this period. Breaking down this figure, they found the TM group were 49 per cent less likely to have died of cancer and 30 per cent less likely to have died of cardiovascular disease (American Journal of Cardiology, vol 95, p 1060). “I personally believe this suggests that this deep rest enlivens basic self-repair mechanisms,” says Schneider.
But Jane Irvine, a psychologist at York University in Toronto, who studies the effects of non-drug interventions on cardiovascular disease, says the study is not definitive. “With such a small sample size, it’s possible to get flukey events that take on more magnitude than they should,” she says. She adds that the analysis did not look at underlying risk factors, such as weight, smoking, and family history, which could explain the findings if assignment to groups was not random.
“With such a small sample size, it’s possible to get flukey events that take on more magnitude than they should”
It is not even clear if any of those who trained in TM continued to practice after the earlier studies ended. “How can we believe that this three-month effect can really carry over for ten years or more?” asks Irvine.
