Meditation and Relaxation Techniques to Lower Blood Pressure
Meditation, a mind-body practice that promotes relaxation, shows promise as a tool for keeping your blood pressure under control. Blood pressure or hypertension is the force exerted by the blood against the walls of the arteries and can be elevated due to a number of factors (such as age-related narrowing of the arteries, excessive sodium intake, and underlying medical problems). By using meditation to manage your blood pressure, you may be able to boost your defenses against heart disease, stroke, and chronic kidney disease.
Why Is The Problem Of Hypertension Such A Serious Health Risk?
High blood pressure is a vascular disease that affects many people. The technical term for the disease is hypertension. In the World Population Study, 26.4% of the adult population is projected to have hypertension in 2025, which is an expected increase of approximately 60% to a total of 1.56 billion. According to the World Health Organization, heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, killing nearly 18 million people annually.
Many of these deaths are due to high blood pressure. Therefore, hypertension is a major challenge for public health around the world, the prevention, detection, treatment, and control of this disease is of high priority. If you suffer from this, you should always seek medical advice. He will check your blood pressure regularly and prescribe the right medication. However, high blood pressure can only be triggered temporarily, for example by a stressful lifestyle or by fear. Relaxation therapy can also be very helpful here. Because when the stress disappears, the blood pressure will return to normal values.
How Does Meditation Work?
Hypertension is the physical manifestation of the tension that we experience on an emotional level. Nervous stresses lead to a temporary increase in blood pressure in almost everyone. If the stressful situations accumulate and these can no longer be compensated for by recovery phases, the blood pressure can remain permanently elevated. Meditation will help you heal the emotions that are causing the physical problem. Remember that meditations are helpful, but they are never a substitute for good medical treatment.
The Science Behind Meditation and Blood Pressure
While researchers have yet to determine how meditation might lower blood pressure, it is believed that its practice can affect activity in the autonomic nervous system (which regulates blood pressure). Meditation appears to calm activity in the sympathetic nervous system (known to narrow blood vessels in response to stress) and increase activity in the parasympathetic nervous system (known to promote widening of blood vessels).
It is important for a healthy blood pressure that a balance is created between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves, a balance. If only the sympathetic system is constantly fired, the body becomes overwhelmed. However, many people are mainly in stress mode – relaxation is neglected. There is no time to break down the stress hormones, which can damage the body in the long term. Meditation can lower stress-induced high blood pressure.
By analyzing several scientific studies from the past few years, American scientists have now been able to show that meditation can lower the upper blood pressure value (systole) by about 5 millimeters of mercury and the lower value (diastole) by 3 millimeters of mercury. People with high blood pressure apparently benefit just as much as people with normal blood pressure. Such a reduction in blood pressure can already contribute to reducing the risk of stroke.
Some Meditation Practiced For Lowering High Blood Pressure
Meditation helps to stimulate the body’s self-healing powers. Regular meditation also helps reduce the levels of stress hormones in the body. While there are meditation techniques that are especially helpful for high blood pressure, any technique that you personally find relaxing will generally help. Studies confirm that relaxation can have a positive effect on high blood pressure. Here are some commonly practiced meditation techniques.
Yoga
Yoga is a relaxation technique that consists of breathing exercises (pranayama) and movement sequences (yoga poses). This creates a smooth transition. Yoga helps you relieve stress and relax, and it also frees your mind. With regular use, you will feel better after around two months. If you have no previous experience with yoga, an instructor-led course is recommended. You can then use the technique alone at any time.
In addition to reducing stress, you are also doing something for your general well-being and fitness. There are special beginner groups for beginners and courses with more difficult exercises for advanced learners. Two yoga units per week of 30 to 60 minutes are sufficient.
Transcendental Meditation
Transcendental meditation (a type of meditation that involves silently repeating a word, sound, or phrase to prevent distracting thoughts from entering the mind) may be effective in controlling blood pressure, according to an analysis of nine clinical trials by 2008. Researchers concluded that the practice of transcendental meditation may have the potential to lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure by approximately 4.7 and 3.2 mm Hg, respectively. (Systolic blood pressure is the maximum number in the blood pressure reading, diastolic blood pressure is the lower number.)
It should be noted that an earlier review of the research (published in 2004) classified five clinical trials and found a lack of good quality studies to support the use of transcendental meditation for blood pressure management.
Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness meditation is a mental training exercise that teaches you to calm both your mind and body, slow down overwhelming thoughts, and let the negativity go. Mindfulness techniques vary, but mindfulness meditation generally involves breathing and physical and mental awareness.
An experiment by researchers at the University of Los Angeles has shown that in addition to lowering blood pressure and stress, ‘mindfulness’ helps “through the improvement of self-regulation, including through the control of attention, self-awareness, and the regulation of emotions. Stress reduction therapy with mindfulness meditation has several positive effects, but if a person has a grade one hypertension and who is not using a medication, and lowering pressure is their goal, and then mindfulness therapy would not be the optimal program.
How To Properly Do Relaxation Response Exercises:
Relaxation response exercises are recommended, twice a day, for 10 – 20 minutes. Meditation experts agree with this recommendation.
How to properly do relaxation response exercises:
Sit in a quiet place with your eyes closed.
Relax the muscles of your body and silently repeat a word, phrase, sound, or short prayer of your choice, over and over again.
When other thoughts interfere with what you are doing, let them come but you keep repeating the word, phrase, etc you have chosen and you will find that these thoughts, by themselves, will start to go away.
The result of this removal is a calming of the mind and consequently a reduction in blood pressure and relaxation techniques lower blood pressure.
How Long Does It Take To Meditate Before You Can See The Benefits On Blood Pressure?
The benefits may be immediate, but since everyone is different, it is not possible to accurately predict how soon blood pressure will drop. In most cases, research has shown that within 1-2 months there is a significant drop in blood pressure if it has been too high.
DOES MEDITATION REPLACE MEDICATION?
Reasons for seeking alternatives to medications may include a desire to avoid side effects. Adherence to high blood pressure medications is often poor, and some patients do not improve their blood pressure levels by taking pills.
The adults in the study were “prehypertensive,” meaning they had higher blood pressure levels but not high enough to take medication. One question the study left unanswered is whether meditation can help people whose hypertension has moved into the range generally treated with medication, or whether a combination of meditation and medication will work better than either treatment.
Since scientists have yet to prove that meditation can significantly lower blood pressure, it is important not to rely solely on meditation as a means of keeping your blood pressure under control. In order to achieve and maintain normal blood pressure levels, you must eat a healthy diet, limit sodium and alcohol intake, exercise regularly, maintain a healthy weight, and avoid tobacco use.
If you are interested in using meditation to control high blood pressure, talk to your doctor about including meditation in your treatment program. Self-medicating and avoiding or delaying standard care can have serious consequences for your health.
Is There A Time When The Patient Can Stop Taking The Medicine?
That must be decided by each patient’s physician according to certain criteria; for example, the patient’s blood pressure has reached normal levels at least three consecutive times. The need for antihypertensive medication is reduced and sometimes eliminated. Patients should not decide for themselves when to stop the medication.
Disclaimer: Only generic information is provided in this content and this is in no way a substitute for a qualified medical opinion. Always consult your own doctor or a specialist for more information. Please check with your doctor if you are on any prescription medications. Some foods and supplements may interfere with certain medications. HEALTHY and FITNESS do not claim responsibility for this information.
