Meditation has long been considered a healthy lifestyle practice. Many people swear by its ability to reduce daily stress, improve emotional well being, and boost overall health. Among meditation’s many uses, meditation for heart health is coming to the forefront as one of meditation’s amazing benefits.
Recently the American Heart Association (AHA) reviewed dozens of studies on how meditation impacts heart health. The report supports the healing effects of meditation. With more than $200 billion spent annually on heart disease, it would serve humanity well to find inexpensive, healthy, and readily available alternatives. Meditation is rising up as a strong preventative to stress, which can not only prevent adrenal fatigue but may reduce risk factors for heart disease as well.
By helping to avoid stress and many several common disease risk factors, can meditation improve heart health and prevent adrenal fatigue?
Meditation for Heart Health: A Statement by the AHA
Introduction
In the Journal of the American Heart Association, a scientific statement was released entitled “Meditation and Cardiovascular Risk Reduction: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association”. This is the first time the AHA has issued a statement in regards to meditation and heart health. The experts at the AHA have reviewed dozens of studies which were conducted on meditation. The studies reviewed covered eight forms of meditation, their effects on heart disease risk factors, and the recovery of those that had suffered heart disease, such as heart attacks. The risk factors studied included stress, smoking, high blood pressure, and atherosclerosis.
The ground-breaking review set forth by the AHA is an innovative scientific review that incorporates long-held beliefs about meditation’s health benefits with scientific research. The AHA’s findings may open the way to an entirely new field of medical developments for improving the health of the heart and body.
Conclusions of the Study
For many years, it has been speculated that mediation for heart health may be a possible alternative to modern standardized medicines and the new findings by the AHA show support for this ideology. Dr. Glenn Levine, Chair of the American College of Cardiology task force on clinical practice guidelines, says that the studies have shown encouraging results.
However, Dr. Levine also suggests that the data is not yet conclusive to recommend meditation for heart disease as the only way of managing the condition. Though the results were promising, Dr. Levine’s group still encourages using existing methods besides meditation for heart disease, such as losing weight, quitting smoking, and lowering cholesterol.
“Our clear message is that meditation may be a reasonable (additional) intervention, but we specifically do not want people to rely on meditation or other such adjunctive interventions in place of proven therapies,” states Levine. “Meditation should be considered as a potential lifestyle modification, but should not be used to replace standard and proven treatments such as smoking cessation, blood pressure control and treatment of high cholesterol levels.”
Many of the studies covered the effects of meditation on reducing several of the factors common in heart disease, such as meditation and lower blood pressure, meditation and lower stress, etc.. The studies do suggest that meditation at the very least reduces stress and blood pressure, which are both considered strong risk factors in general heart disease. Addressing stress concerns can reduce stress hormones which have been linked to higher risks of heart attack. Lowering blood pressure can damper the risk of general heart disease. Meditation appears to both reduce stress and lower blood pressure.
What You Can Take from the Report
Meditation can be included as part of your daily heart-healthy strategy, so long as you understand that the data has not yet conclusively proven that meditation for heart health has tangible benefits. The AHA and Levine state in the report that they believe people interested in improving their hearts health should certainly consider meditation for heart health, so long as they are also including other “scientifically proven” techniques to reducing risk of heart disease. Levine says “we are extremely encouraged by the findings,” and continues to say that more studies will be necessary to prove the practice of meditation for heart health works definitively.
An Introduction to AFS
Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome or AFS is a condition that will likely affect almost everyone at some point in their lives, yet most physicians don’t even know what it is. The most prevalent symptoms of AFS are lethargy and fatigue, but they also include anxiety, insomnia, brain fog, and an inability to lose weight.
AFS is a condition which afflicts the adrenal glands. These glands are responsible for producing several hormones such as adrenalin and cortisol. These glands are also responsible for maintaining metabolic processes such as balancing blood sugar levels, regulating inflammation, regulating the balance of salt and water in the body, and controlling the “flight or fight” response which is brought on by stress or danger.
The most common cause of AFS is constant and unrelenting stress. The ability to handle environmental and emotional stress is a major key to survival. To cope with stress the body has a system in place, known as the NeuroEndoMetabolic (NEM) Stress Response. A major component of this NEM response system is the adrenal glands. Over the years, constant stress taxes the adrenal glands, which causes the glands to become fatigued, reducing your body’s ability to deal with stress and creating a range of issues. go right here
