Mindfulness training may help you lower blood pressure

As the leading cause of death in both the United States and the world, heart disease claims nearly 18 million lives every year, according to the World Health Organization.

Many of these deaths are due to high blood pressure, and could be prevented through medication or lifestyle changes such as healthier eating, weight loss, and regular exercise—but behavior change is often challenging.

In a new study, researchers found that mindfulness may be useful to lower blood pressure.

The research was conducted by a team at Brown University.

According to the team, Mindfulness may represent another approach to helping people bring their blood pressure down, by allowing them to understand what’s happening in their minds and bodies.

In the study, the team developed a nine-week customized Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction (MB-BP) program for 43 participants with elevated blood pressure and followed up with them after one year.

The program aimed to use mindfulness techniques to enhance attention control, emotion regulation and self-awareness of both healthy and unhealthy habits, thereby diminishing some of the risk factors associated with elevated blood pressure.

The team found that after the mindfulness training, participants exhibited strong improvements in self-regulation skills and much-reduced blood pressure readings.

Participants who had not been adhering to the American Heart Association’s guidelines for salt and alcohol intake and physical activity improved in those areas as well.

The positive effects were still present at the one-year follow-up and were most pronounced for participants who enrolled with stage 2 uncontrolled hypertension (i.e., a systolic blood pressure equal to or greater than 140 mmHg).

These participants experienced a mean 15.1-mmHg reduction in blood pressure.

The team says a follow-up study is currently underway: a randomized control trial of the MB-BP program that contains more than 200 participants.

They hope that these projects will lead to a paradigm shift in terms of the treatment options for people with high blood pressure.

For people who don’t face challenges in maintaining healthy blood pressure, MB-BP training may be an effective preventive tool.

The lead author of the study is Eric Loucks, an associate professor of epidemiology, behavioral and social sciences, and medicine.

The study is published in PLOS ONE.

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