A landmark commentary co-authored by MIU’s Dr. Robert Schneider has been published in Nature Reviews Cardiology, the world’s highest-impact journal in cardiovascular medicine.

Nature Reviews Cardiology is part of the Nature Portfolio of journals, which includes Nature and a wide range of specialized titles. “Nature is like the journal Science,” Dr. Schneider said. “Top of the world.”

“Nature is like the journal Science — top of the world.”

— Dr. Robert Schneider

The commentary, entitled “Transcendental Meditation to Combat Psychosocial Stress, Hypertension and Cardiovascular Disease,” follows on the heels of the new hypertension guidelines released last August by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology.

For the first time, these guidelines — the nation’s most authoritative high blood pressure treatment recommendations — include Transcendental Meditation® as an option for lowering blood pressure in all patients with elevated blood pressure.

High blood pressure affects nearly half of U.S. adults and is the leading preventable risk factor for cardiovascular disease, stroke, and dementia.

The commentary highlights psychological stress as a major, modifiable driver of hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Chronic stress nearly doubles the risk of heart attack and stroke — similar to smoking or diabetes — yet despite decades of evidence, stress reduction remains underutilized in prevention strategies.

Drawing on more than 30 years of NIH-funded research at the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Dr. Schneider and co-authors Dr. Keith Norris (UCLA) and Dr. Robert Brook (Wayne State University) present Transcendental Meditation as an evidence-based, low-risk intervention that complements conventional lifestyle recommendations.

“Transcendental Meditation can effectively lower blood pressure, improve cardiometabolic health and might even reduce clinical cardiovascular disease events,” the authors write. “Recognizing Transcendental Meditation within prevention frameworks could transform stress management from a lifestyle option into a core strategy for cardiovascular protection.”

Neurophysiological studies reveal that TM produces a state of “restful alertness,” reducing sympathetic activity and stress hormones while improving autonomic regulation and vascular health.

“We wrote this piece to elaborate on the 2025 AHA/ACC high blood pressure guidelines, which include Transcendental Meditation as an evidence-based option for lowering blood pressure,” Dr. wrote in a first social media post from Nature. “This inclusion reflects more than three decades of research. At the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, our team has conducted NIH-funded mechanistic and clinical trials demonstrating that the Transcendental Meditation technique reduces sympathetic activation, improves metabolic and inflammatory biomarkers, slows vascular ageing, and in several randomized trials lowers the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events.”

The commentary connects these recommendations with the scientific evidence linking psychosocial stress to hypertension, cardiometabolic disease, and cardiovascular disparities. It also highlights practical steps for integrating validated stress-reduction into cardiovascular prevention.

“We hope this commentary encourages wider inclusion of mind–body approaches in cardiovascular medicine and stimulates further research on mechanisms, implementation, and precision public health,” Dr. Schneider wrote.

Transcendental Meditation now included in new national guidelines for high blood pressure

The nation’s most authoritative high blood pressure treatment guidelines, published last August by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology, include Transcendental Meditation® as an option for lowering blood pressure in all patients with elevated blood pressure.

This is the first time this has happened, and TM is the only meditation technique cited, with evidence rated moderate to high quality. Other meditation and mindfulness practices were not included due to weaker data.

The guidelines strongly recommend lifestyle changes for all adults to prevent and treat high blood pressure. TM is now listed alongside diet, exercise, weight control, and other healthy lifestyle behaviors, with potential applicability to tens of millions of Americans.

The guideline states: “In adults with or without hypertension, stress reduction through transcendental meditation may be reasonable to prevent or treat elevated BP and hypertension, as an adjunct to lifestyle or medication interventions.” 

“This is a landmark acknowledgement,” said Robert D. Brook, MD, Professor of Medicine at Wayne State University and past chair of the AHA scientific statement on alternative approaches to blood pressure.

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The banner image is an AI-generated image used for illustrative purposes, not a photo of actual study participants.

Resources

Click here for the comment in Nature Reviews Cardiology, here for Nature’s “Behind the Paper” social media post by Dr. Schneider, and here for the full AHA/ACC guideline.