How much can deep breathing lower blood pressure

Hypertension is the second-leading underlying cause of death (smoking is first), but lifestyle changes can be amazingly effective at lowering high blood pressure. In the Lark hypertension study, the average blood pressure among patients with hypertension decreased in six months while using Lark and a home blood pressure monitor. Breathing exercises for hypertension can be part of your plan to manage hypertension, and here is an overview.

Hypertension is high blood pressure, or a higher-than-normal force of blood against walls of blood vessel walls. A reading of at least 130/80 mm Hg is considered hypertension. People are more likely to develop hypertension if they have a family history of hypertension, are older, or are African-American or Hispanic American.

Free Health Kit & Fitbit®

low
Risk

Some ways to lower risk for hypertension are losing weight if you are overweight or obese, becoming physically active, improving nutrition quality of what you eat, getting adequate sleep, and getting conditions such as diabetes and high cholesterol under control. Managing stress better can also lower blood pressure. 

Along with taking medications as prescribed, these same changes can also help lower blood pressure if you already have it. Lark for Hypertension coaches patients on these lifestyle changes. 

Slow breathing exercises are a stress management technique that can help lower blood pressure. In one study, participants who used a smartphone app that coached on deep breathing for 3 months had an average decrease in systolic blood pressure of -8 mm Hg.

Even a single session of slow breathing and mental relaxation can reduce blood pressure, along with heart rate and breathing rate. 

Breathing exercises can lower blood pressure quickly, and continuing breathing exercises for weeks or months can help keep blood pressure lower during that period. It may be good to practice breathing exercises on a regular basis, such as in the morning or evening, as well as in certain situations when you may need help getting blood pressure down. These can include the following.

• Before taking a blood pressure measurement at home or in the doctor’s office so your reading is accurate and not artificially high.
• Before what may be a stressful situation, such as before giving a presentation at work or walking into a dental appointment.
• Before reacting in a possibly negative way, such as getting angry with your spouse or children or engaging in road rage when another car cuts you off.
• When you feel stressed.

There are many types of breathing techniques. It can work to try them all and see which you like. It is important not to get stressed over the exact breathing techniques themselves because that can have the opposite effect – it can raise your blood pressure! Instead, focus on your breathing and acceptance of yourself.

Deep breathing is simple, but it can be effective. It involves taking long, deep breaths while lying or sitting in a comfortable and focusing on your stomach rising and falling.

Breath Focus has you imagining peacefulness as you breathe in, and imagining you are releasing tension as you breathe out. You can also say a simple phrase with each inhale and exhale. It could be something like, “I breathe in calm,” as you breathe in, and, “I breathe out stress,” as you exhale.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation has you working up your body, as you breathe in and out slowly, until you are completely relaxed. Each time you inhale, tense a muscle group. When you exhale, relax those muscles. Start with your toes, then progress to your feet, ankles, calves, thighs, rear-end (glutes), stomach, chest, shoulders, arms, fingers, and neck.

Controlled Equal Breathing has you counting as you breathe and controlling your breathing so you breathe in for the same amount of time you breathe out. You might start by breathing in as you count slowly to four, then breathing out as you count to four, then repeating a few times. As you practice, you can increase the length of time you count for each breath.

Do you need help managing stress and mastering breathing exercises? Lark for Hypertension can help you practice breathing techniques so they can become habits and you can rely on them whenever you need them. You can also learn and practice more techniques for managing stress to lower blood pressure.

Free Health Kit & Fitbit®

low
Risk

Lark’s coaching includes plenty of other areas to help you get blood pressure down. From eating right, losing weight, and getting more physically active, to taking medications as prescribed, Lark encourages you to make small changes in your daily routines so blood pressure control becomes easier. Your Lark coach is available all the time to give feedback, let you log your data and track your progress, and offer tips.

These small changes can add up to big results. Participants in the Lark hypertension study had access to Lark for 6 months. In that time, the average decrease in systolic blood pressure was over 8 mm Hg – not shabby! Deep breathing and other breathing exercises for hypertension could fit into your own plan to control blood pressure.

Take a slow deep breath, then exhale just as slowly. Can you take fewer than 10 breaths a minute? Research suggests breathing that slowly for a few minutes a day is enough to help some people nudge down bad blood pressure.

Why would that brief interlude of calm really work? A scientist at the National Institutes of Health thinks how we breathe may hold a key to how the body regulates blood pressure — and that it has less to do with relaxation than with breaking down all that salt most of us eat.

Now Dr. David Anderson is trying to prove it, with the help of a special gadget that trains volunteers with hypertension to slow-breathe.

If he's right, the work could shed new light on the intersection between hypertension, stress and diet.

"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.

An estimated 65 million Americans have high blood pressure, putting them at increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, kidney damage, blindness and dementia. Many don't know it. Hypertension is often called the silent killer, because patients may notice no symptoms until it already has done serious damage.

Anyone can get high blood pressure, measured as a level of 140 over 90 or more. But being overweight and inactive, and eating too much salt — Americans eat nearly double the upper limit for good health — all increase the risk. Indeed, losing weight, physical activity and cutting sodium are the most effective lifestyle changes people can make to lower blood pressure. Still, most hypertension patients need medications, too.

Mysteries of high blood pressureWhile they know risk factors, scientists don't fully understand the root causes of hypertension: What skews the body's usually finely tuned mechanisms for regulating the force of blood pounding against artery walls, until it can't compensate for some extra pounds on a couch potato? Understanding those mechanisms could point to better ways to prevent and treat hypertension.

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.

Then in 2002, the Food and Drug Administration cleared the nonprescription sale of a medical device called RESPeRATE, to help lower blood pressure by pacing breathing. The Internet-sold device counts breaths by sensing chest or abdominal movement, and sounds gradually slowing chimes that signal when to inhale and exhale. Users follow the tone until their breathing slows from the usual 16 to 19 breaths a minute to 10 or fewer.

In clinical trials funded by maker InterCure Inc., 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.

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.

Don't hold your breathSo, in a laboratory at Baltimore's Harbor Hospital, Anderson is using the machine to test his own theory: When under chronic stress, people tend to take shallow breaths and unconsciously hold them, what Anderson calls inhibitory breathing. Holding a breath diverts more blood to the brain to increase alertness — good if the boss is yelling — but it knocks off kilter the blood's chemical balance. More acidic blood in turn makes the kidneys less efficient at pumping out sodium.

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.

"They may be changing their blood gases and the way their kidneys are regulating salt," he says.

If Anderson's right, it would offer another explanation for why hypertension is what he calls "a disease of civilization and a sedentary lifestyle."

Meanwhile, health authorities recommend that everyone take simple steps to lower blood pressure: by dropping a few pounds, taking a walk or getting physical activity, and eating less sodium — no more than 2,300 milligrams a day — and more fruits and vegetables.