1 week Ago By Samantha Leathers
High blood pressure, often referred to as a silent killer, doesn't exhibit any symptoms on its own but can lead to severe medical events like heart attacks if left untreated. Despite many people being prescribed medication for the condition, adherence rates are notoriously low. A new study published in BMJ Medicine saw UK researchers from across the nation collaborating to explore alternative treatment methods.
After analysing almost 200 studies, they discovered that mindfulness exercises and practices provided the most significant improvement. These exercises resulted in a drop in systolic blood pressure by 9.90mm Hg.
To put this into perspective, just a 5mm Hg drop can reduce your risk of a cardiovascular event by 10%. The beauty of these practices is that they don't require any specific equipment, space or environment, meaning you can participate from your desk, your bed, or wherever you have a few spare minutes. Common mindfulness exercises include body scanning, guided imagery and breath work.
One popular technique is box breathing, which incorporates two of these activities. Imagine the outline of a box and synchronise your breath with it; inhale for four seconds, drawing a line in your mind. Then hold for four seconds, drawing a perpendicular line.
Exhale for four seconds and hold for another four seconds to complete the box and connect your lines. Another method is a body scan meditation, which roots you in your body by concentrating on individual muscles and body parts as you navigate through your entire body. There are numerous guided meditation prompts available online that can guide you through this technique, or you can create a path through your body that best suits your needs and time limitations.
The study also found other exercises to be particularly beneficial, including yoga and other meditative movement exercises, which resulted in a blood pressure drop of 9.58mm Hg. Listening to music was linked with a 6.
61mm Hg reduction and psychotherapy lowered blood pressure by 9.83mm Hg. However, the researchers pointed out that while all these techniques proved useful in the short term, they didn't show any statistical effectiveness after three to 12 months.
The few studies that had results beyond 12 months suggested these techniques might lower blood pressure, but the certainty was low. The researchers emphasised that hypertension is a chronic condition likely to require long-term drug treatments or behavioural changes. As such, interventions that are used for a brief period or provide only short-term benefits are unlikely to be clinically useful.
They said: "Too few studies exist, however, to assess whether the beneficial effects of relaxation are maintained when the techniques are practised for longer than three months. Future studies must clearly report whether participants were still using relaxation methods at the time of the outcome assessment, with details on adherence to the relaxation schedule. These factors might strongly influence the effectiveness of the different relaxation and stress management techniques.
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