Dr. Robert Schneider, M.D., F.A.C.C., F.A.B.M.R., is an NIH-funded medical researcher and author of Total Heart Health: How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease with the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health (Basic Health Publications, 2006). Here he answers questions on cardiovascular disease and its risk factors.

Q: How does anxiety play into heart disease?

Dr. Schneider: Anxiety is considered to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, for hypertension, for many psychosomatic conditions. It generally reduces the quality of life and effectiveness in everyday functioning of a high proportion of America’s population, including its leading executives.

It’s very difficult to reduce anxiety without the harmful side effects of drug treatment for anxiety. And many non-pharmacologic treatments for anxiety have not shown to be effective. For example, there was a meta-analysis of many treatments to reduce anxiety, including relaxation approaches, general meditation approaches and placebo. As you can see in the chart below, most of those had on average the same effect, similar to the placebo, which you can see in the second line.

However, the first line shows studies on the Transcendental Meditation program and anxiety, indicating that the reduction of anxiety in Transcendental Meditation practitioners in these studies was about twice as great as produced by other studies. This shows the Transcendental Meditation program's unique effectiveness for reducing anxiety.

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