Meditation as Medicine

A 1987 survey conducted by Dr. David Orme Johnson found that meditators have decreased need for medical care. Both hospital admissions and outpatient consultations were significantly lower for subjects practicing meditation. The consultation rate was 46.8 percent lower in the 0-19 age group and 54.7% and 73.7% in the 19-39 and above 40 age groups respectively. Put in a different way, for every 4 times a normal person above forty goes to a doctor, a meditator goes only once.

In another study Dr. John Kabat Zinn and Dr. David Richardson found that those who practice meditation have stronger immune systems than those who do not. After they infected a group of beginner meditators and a group of non-meditators with the flu virus, they found that there was a higher presence of antibodies in the mediators both 4 weeks and 8 weeks after the infection.

In America, heart disease and cancer are the two leading causes of death. Dr. David Orme Johnshon’s study found that regular meditators are 55.4% less likely to be hospitalized due to tumor or cancer, and 87.3% less likely to be hospitalized due to heart disease.

No medical treatment or medicine had ever had such a high success rate. If any cholesterol reducing drug could reduce the blood cholesterol level by 50% then this would become breaking news world wide!

In the last 50 years Americans have spent billions and billions of dollars on cancer research. But the rate of cancer has remained unchanged. Yet surveys conducted in the US itself have shown how effective meditation can be reducing the risk of heart disease or cancer. Not only prevention, Dr. Carl Simonton and Dr. Bernie Siegel have been successful in curing hundreds of cancer patients by adding visualization to the regular treatment. At a meeting of the American Urological Association on April 2003, Dr. Dean Ornish announced that his studies showed that meditation may slow prostrate cancer.

Another study concluded that women who meditate on a regular basis and use visualization for healing have lower risk of breast cancer. Yet another report published in the September 1995 edition of Health Magazine said that meditation reduced premenstrual problems by 5%.

Meditation is also effective in curing mental illness. Studies have shown that meditation is extremely effective in treating anxiety across types, ranging from generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, preoperative anxiety etc., and across age groups ranging from adolescents to senior citizens. Prof. Zindel Segal of the department of Psychiatry of the University of Toronto conducted research on the impact of mindfulness meditation on patients who have recovered from a depressive episode, and found that 66% of those who learned mindfulness meditation remained stable (no relapse) for a year, compared with 34% for the control group. A patient who used to take medicine to reduce mental pressure said `This  change is amazing. Before learning how to meditate about two years ago I had never been without medicine. I think medicine is not necessary for stress or depression.