If you’re looking for one natural hypertension remedy as a “magic bullet,” don’t hold your breath – literally. In addition to the old staples for lowering blood pressure, there is one remedy discovered in 1994 that few hypertension sufferers know about. You can breathe your way to lower blood pressure. It’s probably not the sole solution, but modern medical science has proven it can help.
In a study conducted by the National Institute on Aging, Dr. David Anderson noted the connection between slower, deep breathing and lower blood pressure. He thinks it’s a connection you can use to your advantage. If he’s right, the work could shed new light on the intersection between hypertension, stress and diet.
For example, under chronic stress, people tend to take shallow breaths and unconsciously hold them, what Anderson calls inhibitory breathing. Together with high stress, inhibitory breathing constricts blood vessels by increasing muscle tension and may also unbalance blood chemistry. Holding a breath diverts more blood to the brain to increase alertness – good if the boss is yelling or if you’re under a physical attack- but it changes the blood’s chemical balance. More acidic blood in turn makes the kidneys less efficient at pumping out sodium. (Americans eat nearly double the upper limit of salt for good health.) When you suspends breathing, plasma levels of carbon dioxide increase, the blood flow is preferentially shunted away from the skeletal muscles to the brain and heart, and blood pressure increases while heart rate decreases.
“If you sit there under-breathing all day and you have a high salt intake, your kidneys may be less effective at getting rid of that salt than if you’re out hiking in the woods,” said Anderson, who heads research into behavior and hypertension at the NIH’s National Institute on Aging. In animals, Anderson’s experiments have shown that inhibitory breathing delays salt excretion enough to raise blood pressure. Now he’s testing if better breathing helps people reverse that effect.
Meditation, yoga and similar relaxation techniques that incorporate slow, deep breathing have long been thought to aid blood pressure, although research to prove an effect has been spotty. Why slow-breathing works “is still a bit of a black box,” says Dr. William J. Elliott of Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center, who headed some of that research and was surprised at the effect.
Slow, deep breathing does relax and dilate blood vessels temporarily, but that’s not enough to explain a lasting drop in blood pressure, says NIH’s Anderson. So, in a laboratory at Baltimore’s Harbor Hospital, Anderson is using a machine approved in 2002 by the FDA to test his own theory. In clinical trials, people who used the slow-breathing device for 15 minutes a day for two months saw their blood pressure drop 10 to 15 points. It’s not supposed to be a substitute for diet, exercise or medication, but an addition to standard treatment.
Meanwhile, medical experts almost universally recommend you take simple steps to lower blood pressure: by dropping some weight, taking a walk or getting physical activity, and eating less sodium – no more than 2,300 milligrams a day – and more fruits and vegetables. Oh, and don’t forget to stop and take a slow, deep breath now and them.
Slow, deep breathing for a few minutes each day can help your overall health. For the average patient, you can measure your breathing rate manually. You can also find the device used in this research and the clinical trials on the open market available to anyone. If you want to know more, get a free copy of my new report, “5 Things Your Doctors Won’t Tell You About High Blood Pressure Treatment…And Why You Should Know Them” at http://www.highbloodpressurenaturalcuresnow.com/new-page-2.htm.If a lack of income is causing you stress (raising your BP) and you’d like to learn how to build an internet business from scratch, visit my friend Sean Mize’s free training site: http://www.web100k.com.David J Webb is not a medical professional but has been a hypertension sufferer for many years. He believes in controlling blood pressure with as many natural cures as possible, while limiting using medication as much as is healthful.
