Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
cardiovascular
disease;
Introduction
Currently, the main causes of cardiovascular disease
mortality and morbidly are coronary heart disease (CHD)
and stroke. It is well known that CHD is associated with a
western lifestyle, including tobacco use, unhealthy diet,
irregular physical activity, abnormal lipid profile, hypertension, abdominal obesity, alcohol intake, diabetes,
Expert opinion
In 2005, The National Center for Complementary and
Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) of National Institutes of
Health (NIH), recognised meditation as an acceptable
approach in the field of health. On that occasion, possible
conditions to apply meditation as a therapeutic indication
were presented: anxiety, pain, depression, stress, insomnia, cardiovascular disease, aids and cancer. Moreover,
it was applied for mood and self-esteem, and wellness. In
our opinion, considering the data presented in this review,
meditation can be a strategy to complement clinical treatment. The beneficial effects of meditation are beyond
physical effects. Cognitive, memory, and mood alterations
associated to reduced neuroticism can change behaviour
and, consequently, improve lifestyle.
Outlook
The World Health Organization has been focusing on
improving the quality of life to promote health in general.
Likewise, meditation can be a good way for those who
adopt a western lifestyle to produce several benefits in
their lives, including the reduction of cardiovascular
damage. Cellular and molecular aspects must be investigated to elucidate the mechanism of how meditations
act. In front of these evidences, genomic, transcriptomic,
proteomic, metabolomic investigations are useful. The
telomere lengths as predictor of future CHD could be
considered.
Highlights
Here we summarise the effects of meditation on
physiology that could represent possible protector
events to cardiovascular system. Meditation
can:modulate the neuroendocrine axis, reduce stress,
lower releases of cortisol and adrenaline;
regulate the autonomic nervous system and generate
reduction in blood pressure and cardiac frequency;
reduce mortality and the risk of myocardial infarction
and stroke by reducing resistance to insulin, lipid
perodixation, and increase HDL;
optimise biological age by acting on senescence
mechanisms: increasing telomerase activity and
preventing the shortening of telomeres of circulatory
leukocytes or endothelial cells.
In conclusion, among several other effects, meditation
protects the neuroendocrine axis, vascular damage and
senescence. Thus, for all the evidence presented, we are
inclined to believe that the meditation practice may be
clinically useful in primordial prevention of atherosclerosis and the secondary prevention of myocardial infarction
and stroke.
Received September 30, 2013; accepted April 17, 2014
References
1. Yusuf S, Hawken S, Ounpuu S, Dans T, Avezum A, Lanas F,
McQueen M, Budaj A, Pais P, Varigos J, Lisheng L, Investigators
IS. Effect of potentially modifiable risk factors associated with
myocardial infarction in 52 countries (the interheart study):
Case-control study. Lancet 2004;364:93752.
2. Cardoso R, de Souza E, Camano L, Leite JR. Meditation in
health: An operational definition. Brain Res Brain Res Protoc
2004;14:5860.
3. Cardoso R, de Souza E, Camano L. Chapter 10: Meditation for
health purposes (conceptual and operational aspects). In:
De Luca BN, editor. Mind-body and relaxation research focus.
Hauppauge, NY, USA: Nova Science Publishers; 2008:21324.
4. Wallace RK, Benson H, Wilson AF. A wakeful hypometabolic
physiologic state. Am J Physiol 1971;221:7959.
5. Benson H. The relaxation response: History, physiological basis
and clinical usefulness. Acta Med Scand Suppl 1982;660:2317.
6. Woolfolk RL. Psychophysiological correlates of meditation. Arch
Gen Psychiatry 1975;32:132633.
7. Brefczynski-Lewis JA, Lutz A, Schaefer HS, Levinson DB,
Davidson RJ. Neural correlates of attentional expertise in
long-term meditation practitioners. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA
2007;104:114838.
8. Tang YY, Lu Q, Geng X, Stein EA, Yang Y, Posner MI. Short-term
meditation induces white matter changes in the anterior cingulate. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2010;107:1564952.
9. Bevan AJ. Endocrine changes in transcendental meditation.
Clin Exp Pharmacol Physiol 1979;7:756.
10. Infante JR, Peran F, Martinez M, Roldan A, Poyatos R, Ruiz C,
Samaniego F, Garrido F. Acth and beta-endorphin in transcendental meditation. Physiol Behav 1998;64:3115.
11. Walton KG, Pugh ND, Gelderloos P, Macrae P. Stress reduction and preventing hypertension: Preliminary support for a
psychoneuroendocrine mechanism. J Altern Complement Med
1995;1:26383.
12. Tooley GA, Armstrong SM, Norman TR, Sali A. Acute increases
in night-time plasma melatonin levels following a period of
meditation. Biol Psychol 2000;53:6978.
13. Peng CK, Mietus JE, Liu Y, Khalsa G, Douglas PS, Benson H,
Goldberger AL. Exaggerated heart rate oscillations during two
meditation techniques. Int J Cardiol 1999;70:1017.
14. Infante JR, Torres-Avisbal M, Pinel P, Vallejo JA, Peran F, Gonzalez F, Contreras P, Pacheco C, Roldan A, Latre JM. Catecholamine
levels in practitioners of the transcendental meditation technique. Physiol Behav 2001;72:1416.
15. Jevning R, Wilson AF, Davidson JM. Adrenocortical activity during
meditation. Horm Behav 1978;10:5460.
16. Kim DH, Moon YS, Kim HS, Jung JS, Park HM, Suh HW, KimYH,
Song DK. E. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry
2005;29:32731.
17. Mills PJ, Schneider RH, Hill D, Walton KG, Wallace RK. Betaadrenergic receptor sensitivity in subjects practicing transcendental meditation. J Psychosom Res 1990;34:2933.
18. Barnes VA, Treiber FA, Turner JR, Davis H, Strong WB. Acute
effects of transcendental meditation on hemodynamic functioning in middle-aged adults. Psychosom Med 1999;61:52531.
19. Davidson RJ, Kabat-Zinn J, Schumacher J, Rosenkranz M,
MullerD, Santorelli SF, Urbanowski F, Harrington A, Bonus K,
the west of Scotland primary prevention study: A nested casecontrol study. Lancet 2007;369:10714.
48. Ogami M, Ikura Y, Ohsawa M, Matsuo T, Kayo S, Yoshimi N,
HaiE, Shirai N, Ehara S, Komatsu R, Naruko T, Ueda M. Telomere
shortening in human coronary artery diseases. Arterioscler
Thromb Vasc Biol 2004;24:54650.
49. ODonnell CJ, Demissie S, Kimura M, Levy D, Gardner JP, WhiteC,
DAgostino RB, Wolf PA, Polak J, Cupples LA, Aviv A. Leukocyte
telomere length and carotid artery intimal medial thickness:
The Framingham Heart Study. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol
2008;28:116571.
50. Benetos A, Gardner JP, Zureik M, Labat C, Xiaobin L, Adamopoulos C, Temmar M, Bean KE, Thomas F, Aviv A. Short telomeres
are associated with increased carotid atherosclerosis in hypertensive subjects. Hypertension 2004;43:1825.
51. Werner C, Frster T, Widmann T, Pss J, Roggia C, Hanhoun M,
Scharhag J, Bchner N, Meyer T, Kindermann W, Haendeler J,
Bhm M, Laufs U. Physical exercise prevents cellular senescence in circulating leukocytes and in the vessel wall. Circulation 2009;120:243847.
52. Puterman E, Lin J, Blackburn E, ODonovan A, Adler N, Epel E.
The power of exercise: Buffering the effect of chronic stress on
telomere length. PLoS One 2010;5:e10837.
53. Jacobs TL, Epel ES, Lin J, Blackburn EH, Wolkowitz OM,
BridwellDA, Zanesco AP, Aichele SR, Sahdra BK, MacLean
KA, KingBG, Shaver PR, Rosenberg EL, Ferrer E, Wallace BA,
SaronCD. Intensive meditation training, immune cell telomerase activity, and psychological mediators. Psychoneuroendocrinology 2011;36:66481.
54. Hoge EA, Chen MM, Orr E, Metcalf CA, Fischer LE, Pollack MH,
DeVivo I, Simon NM. Loving-kindness meditation practice
associated with longer telomeres in women. Brain Behav Immun
2013;32:15963.
55. Ravnik-Glavac M, Hrasovec S, Bon J, Dreo J, Glavac D. Genomewide expression changes in a higher state of consciousness.
Conscious Cogn 2012;21:132244.
56. Black DS, Cole SW, Irwin MR, Breen E, St Cyr NM, Nazarian N,
Khalsa DS, Lavretsky H. Yogic meditation reverses nf-b and
irf-related transcriptome dynamics in leukocytes of family
dementia caregivers in a randomized controlled trial. Psychoneuroendocrinology 2013;38:34855.
57. Bhasin MK, Dusek JA, Chang BH, Joseph MG, Denninger JW,
Fricchione GL, Benson H, Libermann TA. Relaxation response
induces temporal transcriptome changes in energy metabolism, insulin secretion and inflammatory pathways. PLoS One
2013;8:e62817.
58. Cummings DE. Ghrelin and the short- and long-term regulation
of appetite and body weight. Physiol Behav 2006;89:7184.
59. Wang J, Chen C, Wang RY. Influence of short- and long-term
treadmill exercises on levels of ghrelin, obestatin and npy
in plasma and brain extraction of obese rats. Endocrine
2008;33:7783.
60. Broom DR, Stensel DJ, Bishop NC, Burns SF, Miyashita M.
Exercise-induced suppression of acylated ghrelin in humans.
J Appl Physiol 2007;102:216571.
61. Arvat E, Maccario M, Di Vito L, Broglio F, Benso A, Gottero C,
Papotti M, Muccioli G, Dieguez C, Casanueva FF, Deghenghi R,
Camanni F, Ghigo E. Endocrine activities of ghrelin, a natural
growth hormone secretagogue (ghs), in humans: Comparison