TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION IS BAD NEWS FOR PTSD

WHY WE SHOULD BE VERY CONCERNED ABOUT USING TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION (TM) AS A TREATMENT FOR PTSD

The David Lynch Foundation, the driving force behind the TM movement, misrepresents scientific evidence to promote TM. In his recent book, Strength in Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation, Bob Roth, CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, writes that he wants “to talk in some detail about some of the truly breakthrough research documenting the unique and profound benefits TM has on health and stress.” [Emphasis A. Siegel.(1).]

Roth’s “breakthrough” refers to a study led by Dr. Robert Schneider, Dean of the College of Maharishi Consciousness-Based Health Care at Maharishi University of Management: “Stress reduction in the secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease: randomized, controlled trial of transcendental meditation and health education in blacks.” (2)

THE DAVID LYNCH FOUNDATION MISREPRESENTING SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE TO PROMOTE TM
Regarding the study, Schneider said “These findings are the strongest documented effects yet produced by a mind-body intervention on cardiovascular disease. The effect is as large as, or larger than major categories of drug treatment for cardiovascular disease” (3).

Why then, on June 27, 2011, only 12 minutes before Dr. Schneider’s article was to publish in the Archives of Internal Medicine, did the editor pull it?
Larry Husten, PhD, a frequent writer for Forbes, the editor of cardiology news for CardioExchange (published by the New England Journal of Medicine), and the editorial director of WebMD, looked into the matter and said that those promoting the research were clearly guilty of gross scientific exaggeration and misstatement. Further referencing an independent analysis of Schneider’s study by Sanjay Kaul, MD, a cardiologist and expert in clinical trials, Husten concluded:

NOT A REAL MEDICAL TRIAL
A trial with barely 200 patients cannot be expected to provide broad answers about the health benefits of a novel intervention. As Kaul and others have stated on many other occasions, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and it is quite clear that the evidence in this trial is not extraordinary, at least in any positive sense.” (4)

Moreover, even though no studies had compared the effects of meditation to that of statins, the most widely used pharmacological treatment for elevated cholesterol, Schneider told WebMD, “What this is saying is that mind-body interventions can have an effect as big as conventional medications, such as statins.” (5)

And, although the study was limited to an exclusively African-American population with heart disease, Schneider generalized his study, stating, “This study builds on previous research findings showing that the Transcendental Meditation program reduces high blood pressure, high cholesterol, insulin resistance, psychological stress, and atherosclerosis, and takes it to the next
step — lower rates of death, heart attack, and stroke.” (6B)

BOGUS SCIENCE & HYPED CLAIMS ON A TM WEBSITE

The following statement appeared on another TM website (tmhome.com):
To see the long-term effects of TM’s ability to lower blood pressure, we studied a group of patients with heart disease . Half of them learned TM and half of them served as the control group. We followed them for five years. Those doing TM had a 48% lower rate of heart attack, stroke and death than men and women with similar physical conditions. [Emphasis A. Siegel. (7)]

If that statement were valid, other medical researchers would have eagerly lined up to replicate the study. Husten offered why that was not the case:

“[T]he results are at best hypothesis generating and tell us nothing about the actual value of TM. Only about 200 people were randomized in the study — most studies with hard clinical endpoints require thousands of patients. And a cursory examination of the actual paper raises all sorts of red flags… (8)

But my biggest concern is with the analysis of the primary endpoint, which was the composite of all-cause mortality, MI [myocardial infarction] heart attack, or stroke. This occurred in 20 patients in the TM group compared with 31 patients in the control group, a difference that the authors claim achieved significance (p=0.03) after adjusting for differences in the age, sex, and use of lipid- lowering drugs between the groups. However, there was no significant difference between the groups in any of these factors. Even worse, there were very significant differences in the amount of education (11.3 years in the TM group versus 9.9 years in the control group, p=0.003) and the CES-D clinical depression scale (13.8 versus 17.7) [for which the authors did not make an adjustment, although in both cases the imbalance would appear to favor the TM group]. When these baseline differences were included in a secondary analysis, the result was no longer significant (p=0.06)”.

In other words, to use the old cliché, they tortured the data until they made it talk. (9)

BOB ROTH MISQUOTES THE AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION (AHA)

David Lynch Foundation’s CEO, Bob Roth, also misquoted a study by the American Heart
Association (AHA): In 2013, the American Heart Association looked at years of research on TM and concluded in its journal Hypertension that TM is the only meditation technique shown to lower blood pressure. [Emphasis A. Siegel.] (10)

The truth came from Robert D. Brook, MD, of the University of Michigan, who chaired the panel of 12 scientists who wrote the study. They concluded:
Numerous alternative approaches for lowering BP have been evaluated during the past few decades. The strongest evidence supports the effectiveness of using aerobic and/or dynamic resistance exercise for the adjuvant treatment of high BP. Biofeedback techniques, isometric handgrip, and device-guided breathing methods are also likely effective treatments. (11)

Meditation isn’t mentioned as having a positive effect on hypertension. The authors concluded that more (and better) studies were needed to determine what, if any, impact TM had on hypertension. The overall evidence supports that TM modestly lowers BP, although it is not clear whether it is truly superior to other meditation techniques in terms of BP lowering because there are few head-to-head studies. [Emphasis A. Siegel] (13)

The AHA study gave TM a mediocre classification — Level B, Class 2B — a rating reserved for the treatment modalities whose usefulness and efficacy was not well established. Another assessment of Dr. Schneider’s study appears in a US News article in which Gregg Fonarow, MD, the Director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center in Los Angeles, said that even though the findings were statistically significant, the study was too small to be conclusive. In addition, since this study was conducted at a single center and the primary [change in heart attack, stroke, and death] was not statistically significant without adjustment for other factors, more studies and replication of these findings are needed.” (13)

TM LIKES ITS BOGUS SCIENTISTS

FIGHTING HEART DISEASE TO PROMOTE TM PROMOTING TM IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN FUNDRAISING FOR HEART DISEASE TREATMENTS

In a Health Day News article, Schneider revealed, “One of the reasons we did the study is because insurance and Medicare call for citing evidence for what’s to be reimbursed. (14) For true believers like Schneider, Husten surmised, fighting heart disease is important only insofar as it can be employed to further the interests of TM. Scientific standards and medical progress are unimportant in the larger scheme of promoting TM.” (15)

When the TM organization exaggerates the findings from their internal research and mischaracterizes research by other scientists, they pose a real danger to the public.

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NOTES
[1] Bob Roth, Strength in Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2018), p. 81.

[2] Bob Roth, Strength in Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2018), pp. 82–84.

[3] Husten, Larry. “New Concerns Raised About Withdrawn Archives Meditation Paper.” Cardio Brief, June 28, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.cardiobrief.org/2011/06/28/new-concerns-raised-about-withdrawn-archives-meditation-paper /

[4] Husten, Larry. “Yet Another Look At The Transcendental Meditation Paper,” Cardio Brief, November 25, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.cardiobrief.org/2012/11/25/yet-another-look-at-the-transcendental-meditation-paper

[5] Husten, Larry, “Yet Another Look At The Transcendental Meditation Paper.” Cardio Brief, November 25, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.cardiobrief.org/2012/11/25/yet-another-look-at-the-transcendental-meditation-paper

[6] Husten, Larry. “New Concerns Raised About Withdrawn Archives Meditation Paper.” Cardio Brief, June 28, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.cardiobrief.org/2011/06/28/new-concerns-raised-about-withdrawn-archives-meditation-paper/

[7] “Dr. Robert Schneider explains the new approach to tackling heart disease.” Transcendental Meditation News & More, 14 June 2017, https://tmhome.com/benefits/dr-robert-schneider-md-heart-health-transcendental-meditation/

[8] Husten, Larry. “New Concerns Raised About Withdrawn Archives Meditation Paper.” Cardio Brief, June 28, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.cardiobrief.org/2011/06/28/new-concerns-raised-about-withdrawn-archives-meditation-paper

[9] Husten, Larry. “New Concerns Raised About Withdrawn Archives Meditation Paper,” Cardio Brief, June 28, 2011. Retrieved from http://cardiobrief.org/2011/06/28/new-concerns-raised-about- withdrawn-archives-meditation-paper/

[10] Bob Roth, Strength in Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2018), p. 84.

[11] Robert D. Brook et al., “Beyond Medications and Diet: Alternative Approaches to Lowering Blood Pressure,” Hypertension, 61 (May 2013), pp. 1360–1383. See http://hyper.ahajournals.org/content/61/6/1360

[12] Robert D. Brook et al., “Beyond Medications and Diet: Alternative Approaches to Lowering Blood Pressure,” Hypertension, 61 (May 2013), pp. 1360–1383. See http://hyper.ahajournals.org/content/61/6/1360

[13] “Meditation Might Cut Risk of Heart Attack, Stoke in Blacks,” Received from https://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/11/13/meditation-might-cut risk-of-heart-attack-stroke-in-blacks

[14] Husten, Larry. “Yet Another Look At The Transcendental Meditation Paper,” Cardio Brief, November 25, 2012. Retrieved from http://cardiobrief.org/2012/11/25/yet-another-look-at-the-Transcendental-Meditation Paper

[15] Husten, Larry. “Yet Another Look At The Transcendental Meditation Paper,” Cardio Brief, November 25, 2012. Retrieved from http://cardiobrief.org/2012/11/25/yet-another-look-at-the-Transcendental-Meditation Paper

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Aryeh Siegel is the author of TRANSCENDENTAL DECEPTION: Behind the TM curtain — bogus science, hidden agendas, and David Lynch’s campaign to push a million public school kids into Transcendental Meditation while falsely claiming it is not a religion. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and family. Discover more at www.tmdeception.com

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