Transcendental Meditation Stress Reduction Intervention for Congestive Heart Failure

The Transcendental Meditation Stress Reduction Intervention for Congestive Heart Failure is a training course to reduce the risk of heart failure through meditation. Transcendental meditation is widely used to reduce stress, which has been linked to the pathogenesis and progression of heart failure. The program is available to African Americans aged 55 or older with congestive heart failure (CHF). Participants are recruited following a hospitalization with New York Heart Association class II or III CHF. Participants meet daily for one and a half hours during the week-long meditation training course. Refresher meetings are held bi-weekly for three months following the training, and once a month for an additional three months. During the training, participants are taught how to perform transcendental meditation, a simple mental technique practiced for 15-20 minutes, twice daily, while sitting comfortably with eyes closed. The program also includes personal interview and instruction sessions, and participants are asked to keep daily diaries of their compliance.

The goal of the intervention is to use meditation to improve health and reduce the risk of heart failure among older African Americans with congestive heart failure.

A randomized controlled trial compared patients receiving the transcendental meditation intervention to a health education intervention. The meditation group significantly improved functional capacity, measured using a six-minute walk test, from baseline to six months after treatment when compared to the education group (p = 0.03). The meditation group showed improvements in quality of life over the education group, measured using Short Form-36 (p = 0.03) and Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire scales. The meditation group had a significant decrease in depression from baseline to six months, using the CES-D survey, when compared to the education group (p = 0.03). When compared to the control group, the meditation group also had fewer hospitalizations, fewer heart failure-related events, and shorter hospital stays during the six months of follow-up.