February is American Heart Health month- which reminds us of the history of mind-body medicine and its power to support healthy hearts.

As a young cardiologist in the 1960s, BHI founder and current director emeritus Herbert Benson noticed a strange phenomenon. His patients’ blood pressure levels were often higher in the office than medication seemed to call for. He began to suspect that simply being in his office was creating artificially high blood pressure.

While this may seem an obvious observation now, it was a time before doctors knew about ‘white coat hypertensive syndrome’ – that is, the stress of seeing a doctor’s white coat in a clinical setting leading to elevated blood pressure.

His observations were confirmed, and got him to thinking that if stress could lead to higher blood pressure, perhaps the reduction of stress could lead to lower blood pressure. This line of inquiry led him to conduct the first studies of the effect of meditation on blood pressure. Doing so was a courageous act, as noone in the field was studying the influence of stress, and virtually all of his colleagues saw meditation and other mind-body approaches as flaky… “woo-woo”… definitely not medicine.

And yet, results showed that eliciting what Benson dubbed the relaxation response could offset the effects of the fight-or-flight response to stress, resulting in decreases in heart rate and respiration, blood pressure and the metabolic rate.  This initial work launched Benson on a path that would establish him as a pioneer in the field of Mind Body Medicine, conducting some of the first evidence-based research in this area, and thus transforming the field from being considered “alternative” health care to one that is now increasingly recognized as an essential component of health care.

And perhaps no condition can benefit more from mind body medicine approaches as cardiovascular disease. The single greatest health-related cause of death in this country, cardiovasvular disease is a devastating source of suffering, leading to over 600,000 deaths per year, and is also the most expensive health care issue in the country. According to the Center for Disease Control, in 2010, cardiovascular diseases in the United States cost $444 billion. Treatment of these diseases accounts for about $1 of every $6 spent on health care in this country.

Nearly 5 decades after Benson’s observation that stress influences blood pressure levels, it is now universally recognized that stress is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease, and that no pharmaceutical approach effectively treats stress.

At the same time, dozens of studies have confirmed the beneficial effects of mind-body approaches such as meditation, yoga and tai chi in reducing blood pressure, and ultimately, the need for expensive pharmaceuticals and procedures. In fact, in 2009, the U.S. Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) formally compared outcomes from the BHI Cardiac Wellness Program with data on matched patients from their database who had had traditional cardiac rehabilitation services.  Their research found a statistically significant reduction in cardiovascular hospitalizations and a dramatic decrease in mortality over the course of the three-year review, as well as striking improvements in blood pressure, lipid levels, weight, and frequency of symptoms in male and female participants.

BHI is committed to more widely disseminating this proven approach to heart health to many more people in the coming years. And so, it is fitting that as we launch into February- heart health month- we are able to announce our upcoming one-day CME conference “Mind Body Medicine and Cardiovascular Health,” to be held May 5 in collaboration with the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. This event will cover the most exciting new research in the field and provide attending health care professionals an introduction to how they may apply techniques in their health care practices.

For those interested in a simpler approach to maintaining heart health, try out this issue’s monthly dose of relaxation, as well as others in our archives.