The Maharishi Vedic Medicine Chronic Disorders Program

D espite living in a nation of great affluence, the citizens of the United States do not always enjoy the best health. For example, in a recent comparison, the United States ranked twelfth (second from the bottom) among 13 developed countries in order of health indicators, such as neonatal and infant mortality; years of potential life lost; low–birth-weight percentages; life expectancy at 1, 15, 40, 65 and 80 years of age for females and males; and age-adjusted mortality.1 Indeed, there is an “epidemic” in the United States of chronic diseases. A 1996 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that more than 100 million Americans (nearly 4 in 10) were suffering from one or more chronic disorders.2 These chronic disorders included, but were not limited to, such common conditions as osteoarthritis, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, coronary heart disease, asthma, psoriasis, chronic headaches, esophageal reflux disease, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, depression, and obesity. The high prevalence of chronic disorders in the U.S. population calls into question the effectiveness of conventional medicine in preventing and treating chronic disorders. Moreover, because our population is aging, one can expect that the numbers of people who are afflicted will only increase. The net result will be a worsening of the problem of the high cost of health care—which is already spiraling out of control—as we continue to promote expensive, high-technology approaches to try to prevent the premature deaths and suffering of millions of Americans. Why does conventional medicine appear to have only limited ability to deal with chronic diseases? Modern medicine has its greatest expertise in treating acute disorders, for which mechanisms are more or less clearly understood (e.g., infectious diseases and surgical emergencies). In treatment of acute disease, we repair the diseased part surgically, as in the case of a diseased appendix or gallbladder, or medically, using antibiotics to kill the bacteria that cause an infection. Even then, however, a cure is obtained only when the body completes the healing process by mending a wound or eradicating the remaining bacteria, bringing the individual back to a state of health in which the homeostatic regulatory processes take over. Chronic diseases have their origins in more complex processes that are less well-understood by the modern medical paradigm. These diseases often involve multiple long-term causes, including mental and emotional factors as well as nutritional, environmental and lifestyle issues. The reason that chronic disorders are chronic is that the intrinsic regulatory mechanisms that are supposed to maintain balanced functioning of and between the mind and body have become reprogrammed in a way that tends to perpetuate the imbalances causing the chronic disease. In this case, it makes much less sense to cut out the diseased part or kill an invading organism, because the “enemy” is within, (i.e., it is a state of imbalance that has developed in the body itself). This article explores the efficacy of a system of consciousnessbased medicine—Maharishi Vedic Medicine (MVM)—as it is applied in its multimodality form (the Chronic Disorders Program) to treat a variety of chronic illnesses.