SINGAPORE: Meditation, the practice of closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing as you go into a state of deep rest, is gaining ground as a relaxation technique that benefits not only your mind but also your body.

More specifically, it may reduce your risk of collapsing from heart problems by modulating your body's response to stress, the root of many illnesses today.

Meditation is a practice that involves calming your mind and body.

Recently, a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine reported that transcendental meditation (TM), a relaxation technique, reduced the risk factors of coronary heart disease in a four-month clinical trial.

Patients who meditated had significantly reduced insulin resistance and lower blood pressure, both risk factors of coronary heart disease. They also had more stable functioning of the autonomic nervous system, which controls the heart and other involuntary muscles.

Dr Antono Sutandar, a consultant cardiologist at Raffles Hospital, explained the relationship between stress, meditation and heart health.

"We know that severe emotional and physical stress causes higher adrenalin levels. This may result in higher blood pressure and, in the worst case, may even transiently impair the ability of the heart to contract well," he said.

"Studies have reported that for people in severe emotional and physical distress, part of the heart experiences a temporary impairment to 'squeeze' properly," he added.

The theory is that your body responds to stress, be it emotional or physical - for example, when undergoing a surgery - in this way: Your sympathetic drive, or adrenalin levels, rise, causing the blood vessels to go into spasm.

This may impair heart function, and raise blood pressure. The higher your adrenalin levels, the higher the tendency for your blood pressure to rise.

In addition, stress causes the body to become less responsive to insulin. Insulin is a hormone that controls the amount of sugar in the body.

If you are physically stressed - for example, when you're suffering from an infection - your body's need for insulin to convert the same amount of sugars into energy will increase.

"Emotional stress has the same effect. It activates the defence mechanism, causing your body to become less sensitive to insulin," said Dr Sutandar.

This condition will worsen if you are pre-diabetic or have metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of risk factors for heart disease.

In these instances, meditation, or any activity that can reduce stress levels, would be useful to improve blood pressure or metabolic syndrome, he said.

It seems a happy person is a healthy person and the merrier you are, the better your general health.

Explained Dr Sutandar: "We know that there is definitely a connection between the brain and heart.

"Emotional distress affects part of the brain function, which affects the sympathetic drive, and, hence, the heart.

"The happier your brain is, the better your heart functions," he said.

Commenting that meditation and medication are complementary approaches to managing diseases, he added: "Drugs can't reduce stress levels, and I don't think using drugs to reduce stress should be a primary approach. Before we consider prescribing drugs, we should explore the avenue of meditation as a means to reduce stress.

"A happy, spiritual or emotional heart is, basically, good medicine."

Dr Raj B Banerjee, a Singapore-based Indian scientist, who has an interest in the clinical application of yoga therapy, said that the basic goal of all forms of meditation is to "de-stress and fathom the deeper layers of silence in the mind, culminating in a state of restful awareness".

According to him, transcendental meditation, or TM, is an "effortless technique" practised for about 15 to 20 minutes twice daily. It allows a person to attain deep rest for the body and mind.

People with high blood pressure or hypertension have derived immense benefits from the daily practice of TM or other forms of meditation. For example, they begin to attain normal cardiac function gradually, noted Dr Raj, who has been researching the therapeutic application of yoga for his PhD thesis for the past eight years.

He said: "A suitable time to meditate is when the person is not feeling tired, irritated or hungry. He or she should feel comfortable and be in a positive frame of mind. Sit down for at least 20 minutes daily to slip into meditative practice. Normally, there is no time frame as to when you will feel the benefits of meditation, but once realised, the effect is slow, deep and lasting." - TODAY

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