Part 3 Part 2 | Part 1By: Jean Johnson for Heart1
In this installment of our update on hypertension, the silent destroyer, we will offer some approaches to behavior changes that increase your chances of keeping blood pressure readings within acceptable ranges.
As the National Institutes of Health program, National High Blood Pressure Education underscores, preventing and controlling high blood pressure is: “Mission Possible.” With that thought in mind, this article focuses on meditation and its role in helping control blood pressure.
Seated or Lying Down Meditation – An “ideal first step”
While the Mayo Clinic is careful to say that “meditation isn’t typically used in place of traditional therapies such as medications your doctor prescribes… some research shows that meditation may be beneficial for certain conditions including anxiety, depression, stress, high blood pressure, and heart disease.”
It may be fourth on the list, but the fact that high blood pressure made the roster at all is cause for a closer look at this activity that is relatively new to permeate mainstream American society.
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Incorporating Meditation into Your Life:
Select a meditation technique that fits your lifestyle and belief system. Start your day with quiet reflection or take a 15-minute mediation break in the afternoon. Consider attending a yoga or tai chi class after work.
Set aside some time each day for yourself. Start with 5-minute sessions and work your way up to 20-minute sessions.
Keep trying. It may not be easy to mindful when meditating. It’s normal for your mind to wander but make an effort to stay focused.
Make meditation part of your life. Incorporating meditation into your daily routine will make it an easier habit to stick to. Experiment so you can find which techniques and timing work best for you. |
The Cleveland Clinic Foundation joins those at the Mayo Clinic in recommending meditation as long as it is used in conjunction with therapies and medications prescribed by an individual’s physician. In particular the Cleveland Clinic cites research that studied ancient relaxation methods that combine breathing and gentle activity from Eastern traditions such as yoga, Qigong, and Tai Chi.
“People with mild hypertension who practiced these healing techniques daily for two to three months experienced significant decreases in their blood pressure, had lower levels of stress hormones, and were less anxious compared with subjects in control groups.”
If you’re wondering how much time you need to devote to these types of practices to get the benefits, it appears that as little as 15 minutes a day sustained effort can make a difference.
“The results of a recent small study suggest that a daily practice of slow breathing (15 minutes a day for eight weeks) brought about a substantial reduction in blood pressure,” states the Cleveland Clinic. They do add a caveat that these findings need to be confirmed in larger and better-designed studies “before these ancient healing techniques are recommended as effective non-drug approaches to treating hypertension.” Nonetheless, the group is on record for the idea that “the possible benefits, coupled with minimal risks, make these gentle practices an ideal first step to begin incorporating physical activity and relaxation techniques into a healthy lifestyle.”
As far as the Mayo Clinic is concerned, meditation is increasingly being recognized as a tool for reducing stress which in turn benefits a range of physical and emotional diseases. For those just beginning to be acquainted with meditation, the Mayo Clinic first summarizes types of concentration techniques designed to calm the mind.
Beginners might start most easily by focusing on their breathing. Focusing on the breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils, or at the abdomen where the belly rises and falls with the breath. When the mind wanders, it’s simply a matter of gently escorting it back to the breath as one might a wayward puppy.
Scanning the body is another technique on the Mayo Clinic listing. “When using this technique, you’ll focus your attention on sensations such as pain, tension, warmth or relaxation in different parts of your body.” It’s helpful to start in the toes and work up through the body, using the breath to first infuse and then relax and let go of each area.
Repeating a sacred name or phrase is the way the Mayo Clinic describes saying a mantra over and over to calm the mind. The actual word is not as important as the repetition itself. “You can create your own mantra, if you’d like. Mantras are the building blocks of transcendental meditation. Examples of religious mantras include a Jesus prayer in the Christian tradition, the holy name of God in Judaism, or the om mantra of Tibetan Buddhism.”
Finally, exercising the imagination is a practice in guided imagery that the Mayo Clinic acknowledges capable of putting people into states of deep relaxation. The work is often done with a recording in which a person’s voice directs visualization exercises. “Perhaps it’s a peaceful place, such as a garden where you feel calm and safe.”
Meditation in Action
If the idea of stilling the body while you still the mind seems a bit much, the Mayo Clinic has conveniently pulled together ideas for “meditation in motion.” Yoga, of course, tops the list since it’s what most Americans are familiar with. While yoga promotes flexibility, balance, and strength, if one attends to the breath while engaging in the postures it can become a spiritual exercise. More specifically, holding a pose at the limits of one’s reach and then slowly releasing, being mindful throughout so that one experiences the wave of relaxation that comes is useful in building physical, mental, and emotional endurance.
Tai chi, while less popular than yoga is an Eastern approach to quieting that uses “gentle, deliberate circular movements combined with deep breathing. As you concentrate,” writes the Mayo Clinic, “on the motions of your body, you develop a feeling of peace and tranquility.”
And lastly, qi gong is a technique out of ancient Chinese culture which integrates physical postures, breathing techniques, and focused attention.
We hope this range of stress-reducing techniques piques your interest and that you find your blood pressure readings dropping as a result of sustained, moderate practice. We’d also like to add a final caveat taken from the September/October 2006 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine in which research related to positive emotions and blood pressure was published.
“Our thoughts and emotions do affect our physical processes,” Glenn V. Ostir, PhD of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston told Reuter’s Health. “The nice thing is that we have some control over that.”
Ostir’s study looked at 2,500 people over age 65 and found that the higher each participant scored on questionnaires designed to measure positive emotions, the lower their blood pressure was. Curious to see if happiness itself might also be related to blood pressure, Ostir’s team also surveyed 2,654 Mexican-Americans who were on an average of 72 years of age. Once again, the correlation between a happy, or positive, state of mine matched with lower blood pressure readings. While the effect was strongest for those that didn’t have to take blood pressure medications, researchers still reported significant connections in participants who used drugs to control their hypertension.
When “we’re worried or anxious or stressed out over things, maybe we should take a step back and be aware of why we’re feeling that way,” Ostir said, acknowledging that getting some perspective on our emotions can sometimes help to defray extreme lows that can have detrimental consequences when it comes to our well being.
We hope you join us in the final part of this series on hypertension for ideas on how to let what you eat complement and enhance your physical and meditative activity.
