Studies Peer Into Meditation

Some recent studies supported by NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine have been investigating:

· The potential effectiveness of the Transcendental Meditation technique to prevent and treat heart disease.

· Mindfulness-based stress reduction to relieve symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and, in a different study, chronic lower back pain.

· What happens to the brain's activity and structures during Buddhist insight meditation (which includes mindfulness) in a study that uses a brain scan called fMRI.

· The long-term impact of meditation on basic emotional and cognitive functions and on mechanisms in the brain that are involved in these functions.

The NCCAM warns that, although meditation is generally safe, there have been a small number of reports that intensive meditation could cause or worsen symptoms in people who have certain psychiatric problems. Individuals who are aware of an underlying psychiatric disorder should speak with a mental health professional before starting meditation.

Source:http://www.nccam.nih.gov/health/meditation