Can You Lower Your Blood Pressure Just By Thinking About it?

A new program promises to lower your blood pressure just by having you think deeply about the steps you should take to control it.

Essentially the plan—presented at a scientific session of the American Heart Association—teaches you how to concentrate your mind in certain ways. Doing so translates into action that causes you to eat healthy, relax, take your medication, and exercise right. At the same time your stress levels go down—and so does your blood pressure.

If it sounds too good to be true, consider that the plan—known as a “customized mindfulness program”—led to noticeable improvements in the blood pressure of those who took part in research tests. Their systolic (that’s the top number) blood pressure fell significantly eight weeks after the start of the plan.

The mindfulness program teaches those who take part to apply those thinking skills in order to have “healthy relationships” with their physical activity, diet, adherence to medication, use of alcohol, and stress.

Good News for Half the Country

The program’s developers believe the program will come as good news to the nearly half of American adults who suffer from high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. Many do not even know that they suffer from it.

The problem is that high blood pressure is a risk factor for stroke and heart disease, both of which are among the leading causes of death in the United States.

The mindfulness program focuses on teaching people with high blood pressure to develop skills such as self-awareness, attention control, and emotion regulation, explains Dr. Eric B. Loucks who is associate professor of epidemiology and director of the Mindfulness Center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. That training is then applied to changes in health behavior.

Loucks adds that this is a new way to control blood pressure. He calls it an in-the-moment non-judgmental awareness of emotions, physical sensations, and thoughts.

Information From the Mind

Mindfulness is almost like a scientist who is objectively and curiously watching the information that is coming in through the mind and the sense organs and then responding in a skilled way to that information, Loucks explains.

Mindfulness also involves the concept of remembering, Loucks continues. In other words, remembering to bring your wisdom (wherever it was gained, such as from health professionals) into the present.

In the context of high blood pressure, wisdom might include understanding that evidence-based practices, such as diet, physical activity, limited alcohol consumption, and keeping to anti-hypertension medication, can improve your well-being.

The Results of the study

In the study, researchers compared participation in an eight-week mindfulness blood pressure program with traditional ways of keeping to your blood pressure target.

Traditional ways include reading educational material on blood pressure, using a blood pressure monitor at home, and having easy access to a doctor when needed. Over 200 adults were divided into two groups. The results of the study were compared six months later.

The researchers found:

• Those who took part in the Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction Group experienced an average drop in systolic blood pressure of almost six. Those who followed the traditional method experienced a decrease in blood pressure of less than two.

• No notable changes were experienced by either group in diastolic (the bottom reading) blood pressure measures.

• Those who took part in the mindfulness program also were more active by an average of 351 minutes a week compared with those who took part in the enhanced care group.

• Those who took part in the mindfulness group were more likely to eat a diet that was consistent with the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet, which is now the top diet recommended by the American Heart Association.

• Those in the mindfulness group were found to be more likely to eat heart-healthy foods generally and to report improved stress levels.

Survivors are Helped, Too

In another study at the University of Colorado in Denver researchers found that those people who survived a heart attack and followed the mindfulness program reported fewer psychological symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder for at least a year after the heart attack.

The physical, psychological, and cognitive effects of surviving a heart attack might linger for years, says Alex Prescutti, of the university. If untreated they can persist. The symptoms do not simply vanish.

Practicing mindfulness, however, appears to protect survivors from suffering those symptoms.