Meditation

   Research & Statistics on the Benefits of Meditation

 

In over 1500 separate studies since the early 1930s, meditation has been clearly shown to offer a wide variety of benefits. The following citations from recent sources highlight many of these results:

  1. Meditation decreases oxygen consumption, heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure, and increases the intensity of alpha, theta, and delta brain waves—the opposite of the physiological changes that occur during [stress].
    Herbert Benson, M.D. Harvard Medical School, author of The Relaxation Response

  2. “Companies including Nortel Networks Corp. have recognized the benefits of meditation by building nondenominational meditation rooms for employees.  CEOs such as Bill George of Medtronic Inc. have practiced daily meditation for many years…When practiced regularly, meditation can help to lower stress and blood pressure and enhance our state of awareness. [Meditation helps] release stress and fatigue, rest the body, and thus allow it to heal naturally by reducing the toxic chemistries of stress.”
    Lance Secretan, Industry Week, March 2001

  3. “Stress reduction techniques, such as meditation, muscle relaxation training, and yoga should be among the daily activities of older people…[studies] show that chronic stress alters brain structure and can reduce the body's ability to maintain normal physiologic and cognitive function.”
    Journal of the American Medical Association

  4. Meditators were less anxious and neurotic, more spontaneous, independent, self-confident, empathetic, and less fearful of death.
    Atlantic Monthly, May, 1991

  5. 75% of long-term insomniacs who have been trained in relaxation and meditation can fall asleep within 20 minutes of going to bed.
    Dr. Gregg Jacobs, Psychologist, Harvard

  6. “Recent research has looked at precisely what happens during meditation that allows it to cause these positive physical changes…A group of people who had meditated for four months [were found to produce] less of the stress hormone cortisol.  They were therefore better able to adapt to stress in their lives, no matter what their circumstances were.”
    Psychology Today, May 2001

  7. A study showed that plasma cortisol, a stress hormone, decreased during meditation, whereas it did not change significantly in controlled subjects during ordinary relaxation.
    Hormones and Behavior, 1978

  8. “John Kabat-Zinn, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester has made meditation the centerpiece of the center's Stress Reduction Clinic. "It doesn't seem to matter what type of medical condition brings people to the Stress Reduction Clinic," says Kabat-Zinn. "Over the eight-week program, they usually report a reduction in symptoms.”
    IDEA Health & Fitness Source, September 2000

  9. Meditation significantly controls high blood pressure at levels comparable to widely used prescription drugs, and without the side effects.
    Journal of the American Medical Association

  10. In a recent study, 77% of individuals with high levels of stress were able to cool down-lower their blood pressure and cholesterol levels-simply by training themselves to stay calm.
    Health, October, 1994

  11. “The three-month study of managers and employees who regularly practiced meditation in [Puritan-Bennett Corporation] showed that meditation practitioners displayed more relaxed physiological functioning, greater reduction in anxiety, and reduced tension on the job, when compared to control subjects with similar job positions in the same companies.”
    Anxiety, Stress & Coping International Journal, 1993

  12. Women with severe PMS showed a 58% improvement in their symptoms after five months of daily meditation.
    Health, September, 1995

  13. Meditators over 6-9 months showed a marked decrease in the thickness of their artery walls, while non-meditators actually showed an increase.  This change translates to about an 11% decrease in the risk of heart attack and an 8% to 15% decrease in the risk of stroke.
    Stroke Journal, reported in Psychology Today, 2001

  14. Relaxation therapies are effective in treating chronic pain, and can markedly ease the pain of low back problems, arthritis, and headaches.
    National Institutes of Health, 1996

  15. Twenty out of twenty-two anxiety-prone people showed a 60% improvement in anxiety levels following an eight week course in meditation.
    University of Massachusetts

  16. Reducing stress can dramatically reduce heart disease.  In a five-year study of heart disease patients, those who learned to manage stress reduced their risk of having another heart attack by 74%, compared with patients receiving medication only. Reducing mental stress also proved more beneficial than getting exercise.
    Dr. James Blumenthal,     Duke University, 1997

  17. Meditation may slow aging.  A study found that people who had been meditating for more than five years were physiologically 12 to 15 years younger than non-meditators.
    International Journal of Neuroscience, 1982

  18. For William W. George, retiring chairman and CEO, Medtronic Inc., Minneapolis, meditation fits the bill. He meditates at home for 20 minutes twice a day, typically before and after work. "It helps sort things out, gets me prepared, and relieves a lot of the stress....Quite frankly, many of my most creative thoughts have come out of meditation."
    Tim Steven, Industry Week, November 2000

  19. Twenty-eight people with high levels of blocked arteries and high risk of heart attack were placed a program with regular practice of meditation, yoga, a low-fat vegetarian diet, and exercise. Twenty people in the control group received conventional medical care endorsed by the AMA. At the end of a year, most of the experimental group reported that their chest pains had virtually disappeared; for 82% of the patients, arterial clogging had reversed. Those who were sickest at the start showed the most improvement. The control group had an increase in chest pain and arterial blockage worsened. (Follow-up studies suggest that the stress-reduction element may be the most significant factor in achieving these results.)
    Dr. Dean Ornish,     San Francisco Medical School, University of California, Lancet Journal

  20. “In World War II, I fought with all types of weapons systems—105mm howitzers, bazookas, you name it.  But I’ve never found anything as powerful as meditation.”
    Bill F., a participant in Dr. Dean Ornish’s studies quoted in Stress, Diet, and Your Heart, 1982

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