Lower Your Blood Pressure Naturally - 7 ways

Lower Your Blood Pressure Naturally
Seven medically proven, drugless ways to thwart this killer

Intro
As his yoga teacher at lyengar Yoga Institute of Los Angeles raises herself up lithely on all fours, demonstrating the back-stretching “down dog” pose, David Shapiro, PhD, follows along.  At 78, Dr. Shapiro, professor emeritus in the UCLA department of psychiatry & biobehavioral sciences and an early pioneer in studies linking stress reduction to lower blood pressure, is fit, not to mention as placid as a Zen garden.  So it catches me off guard when he reveals that he, like so many Americans, takes medication for high blood pressure.  But thanks to regular exercise, a healthy diet, and stress-reducing pursuits such as yoga, he says he’s been able to cut back on his medication significantly.

I’m hoping to cut back altogether, says Dr. Shapiro, whose research has shown, among other things, that people, with high blood pressure who make healthy lifestyle changes and manage their stress can often cut back on their meds and associated side effects, if not give them up entirely.

Not surprisingly, he recommends these changes for everyone, even those who haven’t diagnosed with high blood pressure.  With good reason.  Last year, a report from the famed Framingham Heart Study warned that middle-aged and older Americans face a 90 percent chance of developing high blood pressure sometime in their lives.  No small thing, since high blood pressure, while it causes no symptoms, boosts the risks of leading killers such as heart attack and stroke, as well as aneurysms, cognitive decline, and kidney failure.

Sitting in the back of the class, grimacing through yoga moves that no one but I seem to be having trouble with, I wonder if my odds of developing high blood pressure are even higher than average.  I’m fit and fairly calm myself, but my father, who had untreated high blood pressure, or “hypertention”, died of a stroke at 57.  My mother has high blood pressure too.  Among other things, heredity influences risk of high blood pressure.

As I tally up my risk factors, the story I’m researching takes a personal turn.  I vow to take the advice that experts such as Dr. Shapiro offer for controlling blood pressure; maintaining a healthy weight, exercising, eating right, and managing stress.  “It takes all of these to fight the risk of high blood pressure,” says Prevention advisor Redford B. Wiliams, MD, professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke University Medical Center.  I may even try to get good at yoga.

Carry Less Excess
“When we’re taking about preventing high blood pressure, by far the most important lifestyle factor to consider is weight,” says Curtis Ellison, MD, chief of preventive medicine and epidemiology at Boston University School of Medicine.

“Almost everybody, if they lose a few pounds, is going to bring their blood pressure down,” he says.  In some cases, very few pounds will do the trick.  In one study, people who lost an average of just 7.7 lb and kept if off were half as likely to have high blood pressure as those who hadn’t lost weight.

Studies published in the Journal of Human Hypertension and numerous other respected medical journals reveal that:

• Breathing slowly an deeply (less than 10 breaths per minute) for 10-15 minutes a day while extending exhalation results in significant reductions in blood pressure.

• Documented reductions of up to 36 points systolic and 20 points diastolic have been achieved

• High response rate: 82% of even resistant hypertensives responded to slow breathing in a formal clinical trial

• Using music with slow breathing is the best way to create the relaxation needed for the method to be effective

• The effects of slow breathing are cumulative and begin to last throughout the day within 4 to 6 weeks

• The result is a significant and lasting drop in your blood pressure!