The decrease in admission rates observed over the years in self-reports but not in non-self-reports could be explained by a combination of the Mohammed Ali effect and social expectations. It seems that scientists or cardiologists are no less likely to commit misconduct or to report what they see their colleagues doing, but have become less likely to admit it for themselves.

Reference: Allison, S. T., Messick, D. M., & Goethals, G. R. (1989). On being better but not smarter than others: The Muhammad Ali effect. Social Cognition, 7, 275–295.

1) reversing/healing/normalizing the damage to the body and nervous system due to stressful experience;
2) strengthening the nervous system to become less susceptible to new stress by establishing the relaxed EEG pattern (and/or whatever is the cause of that pattern) found during TM as a trait found outside of meditation.

If there is a large stress-related aspect of a specific person’s disease or disfunction, such as hypertension, TM should have a correspondingly large effect. Not all hypertension patients have a large stress-related aspect to their disease, so TM will have correspondingly less of an effect. After averaging everyone together, TM has been found to have a “modest” effect on hypertension, which is what you would expect, given the above.

I expect that larger studies on TM which can differentiate in terms how stress-related the condition is will find this to be true.

That recent study which you are still critical of found a rather large reduction in cardiovascular disease. It is entirely possible that there is a very large stress-related component in that population, for various reasons.

A recent study out of Germany reports that work-related stress can double the incidence of cardiovascular disease, so it isn’t a stretch to think that the TM study might be valid for that specific group of people while for others, the effect might be smaller OR larger.

http://www.helmholtz-muenchen.de/en/news/press-releases-2013/press-release/article/21273/index.html

When I confronted an electro-cardiologist about lead failures in ICDs all he could do is stare at the ground and admit the stats I was presenting matched his own experience, but he wasn’t prepared to speak further about it.

If one is a healthy patient with good habits the results are not recorded and positive outcomes that are not drug or intervention based are ignored.

Surely you must have some comment seeing how they cite the recently published study on TM and cardiovascular disease that you have written so much about…

W.Larch MD, FACC

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