Hypertension and breathing

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Feb-March, 2005 by Robert A. Anderson

Hypertension may respond to slow breathing exercises without changing medication. Seventeen resistant hypertensives practicing device-guided slow breathing for 15 min/d for 8 weeks reduced their office blood pressure 12.9/6.9 mmHg (p<0.01) and home pressures 6.4/2.6 mm Hg (p<0.05) without side effects; 82% responded and good compliance was observed.

Viskoper R, Shapira I, Priluck R et al. Nonpharmacologic treatment of resistant hypertensives by device-guided slow breathing exercises. Am J Hypertens 2003 Jun; 16(6):484-7

COMMENT: Resistant hypertensives can benefit from and are compliant with self-treatment by device-guided slow breathing. Why not use this and similar low-invasive approaches with all hypertensives? Why would slow breathing make a difference? One plausible mechanism of action may be that stress, tension and anxiety are associated with a breathing cycle which is faster and shallower than optimum. Controlled breathing, then, used by many in the induction phase of biofeedback and meditation, relaxes the body, calms the emotions and quiets the mind, via a reflex reduction in sympathetic output of catecholamines. The reduction in blood pressure is a uniform result of lowered catecholamine release.