Hypertension Training Techniques

Breath Training

• For more than one hundred years, doctors have known that people can control their blood pressure by controlling their breathing. If you reduce your breathing rate to five or six breaths per minute, which is the rate at which people breathe when they are relaxed, your blood pressure will fall.
  
  There are breath meters you can use, such as the FDA-approved RESPeRATE, that will help you time inhalations and exhalations correctly.
  
  

Autogenic & Self Hypnosis Training

• Autogenic training is a technique patients can use several times over the course of a day to relax their body in order to reduce their blood pressure. Each relaxation session takes fifteen minutes. Sit or lie down and consciously relax your arms and legs by imagining that they are heavy and warm. Once your limbs are relaxed, focus on controlling your heart beat; imagine a cool forehead and a relaxed solar plexus.
  
  By periodically calming yourself over the course of a day, you have an opportunity to reduce your blood pressure significantly. The effects of the training are long lasting and significant, proving sufficient to eliminate symptoms of hypertension related to anxiety in some patients.
  
  The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis reported similar results with patients who used hypnosis to control stress and hypertension in 1978.
  
  

Biofeedback Training

• Biofeedback equipment can be used to help patients learn to control their blood pressure. A Menninger Foundation study found more than 60% of patients in the study were able to reduce their blood pressure to an average of 128/80 using biofeedback; an additional 28% were able to reduce the amount of blood pressure medication they had to take. These results have been repeated in multiple studies, although as recently as 2005 the American Journal of Hypertension indicated there is still some controversy as to the efficacy and long-term benefit of using biofeedback in treating hypertension.
  
  

Work with Your Doctor to Explore These Techniques

• Hypertension is frequently treated with medicine, but also responds to weight loss, new food choices, and treatment for snoring. Work with your doctor if you wish to explore the training techniques outlined in this article. Never stop taking your blood pressure medication without your doctor's permission. Sudden changes in blood pressure medication levels in your body can result in a heart attack or stroke.