Biomedical subjects

P Gelderloos

Publications and source records attributed to P Gelderloos.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1995

Stress reduction and preventing hypertension: preliminary support for a psychoneuroendocrine mechanism.

Our objective was to identify endocrine-related mechanisms capable of mediating preventive effects of stress reduction in hypertensive heart disease. Since beneficial effects of stress reduction accrue over time, this cross-sectional, descriptive study sought differences between healthy students not practicing a systematic technique for reducing stress (the average stress, or AS, group, n = 33) and a similar group who for 8.5 years had practiced the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique, used widely to reduce stress (the low stress, or LS, group, n = 22). The two groups of students, matched for age and area of study, performed timed collections of urine that included (separately) the entire waking and sleeping portions of 1 day. They also completed the Profile of Mood States and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, self-report instruments sensitive to subjective level of stress. Urine samples were analyzed for adrenocortical steroids by radioimmunoassay, for Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, and Zn2+ by atomic absorption spectrometry, and for neurotransmitter metabolites by reverse-phase, high-performance, liquid chromatography, and spectrophotometry. The two groups differed significantly on most measures. Specifically, the LS group was lower in cortisol and aldosterone and higher in dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DS) and the serotonin metabolite, 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA). Excretion of sodium, calcium, zinc, and the norepinephrine metabolite, vanillylmandelic acid (VMA), was also lower in this group, as were Na+/K+ ratio, mood disturbance, and anxiety. In women practicing TM, cortisol correlated inversely and DS directly with number of months of TM practice. The results identify improvements in mood state, adrenocortical activity, and kidney function as probable factors in the preventive and treatment effects of stress reduction. Because suboptimal levels of these parameters result from chronic, subjective stress, the findings add mechanistic support to the contention that hypertensive heart disease is avoidable, even in modern industrialized societies.

Adrenal Cortex Hormones↗

PubMed1991

Effectiveness of the Transcendental Meditation program in preventing and treating substance misuse: a review.

This article reviews 24 studies on the benefits of Transcendental Meditation (TM) in treating and preventing misuse of chemical substances. Studies cover noninstitutionalized users, participants in treatment programs, and prisoners with histories of heavy use. All the studies showed positive effects of the TM program. Some of the survey-type studies were unable to exclude the possibility of self-selection or responder biases. However, longitudinal, random-assignment studies with objective measures also showed positive results. Taken together, these and other studies indicate the program simultaneously addresses several factors underlying chemical dependence, providing not only immediate relief from distress but also long-range improvements in well-being, self-esteem, personal empowerment, and other areas of psychophysiological health.

Alcoholism↗

PubMed1990

Transcendence and psychological health: studies with long-term participants of the transcendental meditation and TM-Sidhi program.

We investigated the nature of the relationship between experiences of transcendental consciousness and psychological health. In Study 1, three groups with different levels of experience in transcendental meditation (TM) and in the TM-Sidhi program (techniques that have been shown to produce experiences of transcendental consciousness) were studied, using the self-investigation method of Hermans (1976). We employed blind interviewers and raters with various attitudes toward TM to minimize the possible impact of a variety of artifacts. Cross-sectionally, experience with TM and the TM-Sidhi program was positively related to a general measure of psychological health (p = .002); longitudinally, the meditating groups improved more than the control group on the psychological health measure (p less than .03). In Study 2, two contrast groups of long-term participants were similar on several confounding variables but differed on physiological indicators of experiences of transcendental consciousness. The groups with the positive physiological indicators showed a trend toward higher scores on the psychological health factor (p = .092), indicating that psychological health may be developed through the systematic cultivation of transcendental meditation and the TM-Sidhi program.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1990

Influence of a Maharishi Ayur-vedic herbal preparation on age-related visual discrimination.

An ancient system of natural medicine--Maharishi Ayur-Vedic--prescribes certain herbal formulas to enhance cognitive functioning, prevent illness, and alleviate the detrimental effects of the aging process. A double-blind study was conducted to test the effect of an Ayurvedic herbal preparation, Maharishi Amrit Kalash (MAK), on an age-related alertness task. Forty-eight men over 35 years of age were randomly assigned to receive MAK tablets or a closely matched placebo twice daily for six weeks. A visual discrimination task consisted of the identification of the exact location of a stimulus "v" within an array of x symbols in tachistoscopic presentations. The MAK group improved significantly more in their performance of this task after three and six weeks of treatment relative to the placebo group. Performance was highly correlated with age, and because successful performance apparently requires an unrestricted flow of homogeneous attention as well as focalized concentration, it is concluded that MAK may enhance attentional capacity or alertness, and thus reverse some of the detrimental cognitive effects of aging.

Adult↗

PubMed1988

Topographic EEG brain mapping during Yogic Flying.

Voluntary focal activity typically disrupts EEG alpha activity. This experiment tested the hypothesis that the alpha wave would not be disrupted during "Yogic Flying" (YF), a TM-Sidhi technique that produces movement of the body such as hopping, because the technique operates at a self-referral level in which attention remains in a settled, inwardly directed state. In 23 subjects YF was compared with voluntary jumping in the same subjects which mimicked the movements of YF. The percentage of relative power of alpha was significantly higher for YF in virtually all EEG derivations, supporting the hypothesis. The effect appeared to be of similar magnitude in all cortical areas.

Alpha Rhythm↗