Lower Blood Pressure Naturally

Viable alternatives or just New-Age mumbo-jumbo and wishful thinking?

Natural alternatives to high blood pressure medications run the gamut from DASH diets and superfoods to more esoteric methods like yoga, meditation and guided imagery. Of course, any natural method that can relieve hypertension is cause for cheer. Medications to lower blood pressure are particularly problematic and the public have long been hookwinked about both their safety and their effectiveness.

Of course, not all natural treatments are safe and effective either. While it’s easy to recognize connections between what we eat and what happens within our bodies, cause and effect between body and mind is more difficult to establish.

After all, aren’t many alternative health treatments “all in the mind” and their effects just a matter of wishful thinking?

Well, yes and no. “Wishful thinking”, actually, is a fairly accurate definition of a very powerful medical phenomena: the placebo effect. It’s the power of belief. The placebo effect has been shown to be so effective that some medical experts have called for its use as an approved medical treatment.

Naturally, the placebo effect also has the power to reduce high blood pressure. If you believe that meditating and picturing your blood pressure falling will result in lower readings an hour later - it probably will.

But there’s also a problem with the placebo effect: it almost invariably wears off, usually within a month. And it gets worse because once you experience (and lose) subsequent placebo effects you lose faith. And once belief is gone, so is the placebo effect.

In both mind and body…

But there’s another way to look at alternative health methods: many of their effects are not just “in the mind” but actually generate physical changes in the body. This is particularly relevant when it comes to high blood pressure. Essentially, anything that produces a state of deep relaxation will reduce blood pressure, at least temporarily.

Relaxation is actually a complex state of mind and body. Your brainwaves change when you’re relaxed. Stress hormones that have built up during the day dissipate. Your respiratory and heart rates slow and your blood pressure falls.

Relaxation, especially with music, has even been shown to stimulate production of nitric oxide, a gas in the blood that regulates blood pressure by signalling blood vessels to expand. Slow and smooth breathing when relaxed balances blood chemistry, reducing acidity and lowering blood pressure.

Because these effects are not just in the mind but rather complex physiological processes, the results can in some cases become long-lasting. A clinically-developed method of “slow breathing” that’s both similar to and different from the breathing styles of ancient practices like yoga has lead to significant and lasting drops in blood pressure using just 15 minutes a day.

It’s true that most of the effects of meditation, yoga and similar practices, at least when it comes to blood pressure, are only temporary. But so are the effects of pharmaceutical drugs; i.e. we have to keep taking them every day. And the effects of many alternative practices are life-enhancing, not life-threatening!

Science meets nature for lower blood pressure…

It’s also true that some alternative health practices can act as stepping stones to dramatic improvements in health like long-lasting lower blood pressure. The real breakthroughs – as with slow breathing - are often obtained by combining nature and tradition with science and innovation. It’s high time that science meets nature!