Meditation reduces sympathetic activation and improves the quality of life in elderly patients with optimally treated heart failure: a prospective randomized study.

Objective: We tested whether meditation can reduce sympathetic activation, evaluated by norepinephrine blood levels (NE), and improve quality of life in elderly persons with congestive heart failure (CHF).

Design And Setting: This was a prospective, randomized study conducted from April 2000 to October 2001 in an ambulatory care teaching hospital in São Paulo, Brazil.

Subjects: We studied 19 patients with CHF, 74.