NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Lowering blood pressure 
and relieving stress may be as simple as taking a 
deep breath, results of a study suggest.

According to preliminary findings presented at the 
annual meeting of the American Society of Hypertension 
meeting here, yoga in the form of controlled breathing 
lowered blood pressure in people who were subject 
to mental stress.

B.H. Sung and colleagues from Kaleida Health-Millard 
Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo, New York, measured 
whether yoga and listening to classical music or 
nature sounds could relieve stress. Twelve individuals 
aged 22 to 55 with normal blood pressure were 
subjected to a task that caused mental stress, for 
5 minutes. Researchers measured increases in heart 
rate and blood pressure to gauge stress levels.

Results show that systolic blood pressure--the top 
number of a blood pressure reading which reflects 
blood pressure when the heart contracts--returned 
to normal in an average time of 3.7 minutes with 
no intervention. Deep breathing allowed the systolic 
pressure to return to normal in 2.7 minutes, a 
significant reduction in time.

Classical music brought systolic pressure down in 
2.9 minutes and natural sounds in 3.0 minutes, 
investigators found. There was no significant reduction 
in heart rate recovery with any of the techniques, 
Sung and colleagues note.

A second study found that acupuncture and self-
administered acupressure lowered blood pressure 
after 4 weeks in patients with essential hypertension, 
or high blood pressure with no known cause.

The investigators at Maimonides Medical Center 
in Brooklyn, New York, compared the blood pressure 
readings in 7 people with essential hypertension 
who underwent 4 weeks of therapy, with readings 
from five people who were not treated.

People who received the alternative therapies had 
lower systolic blood pressure readings after 4 
weeks, the findings indicate.

``These results suggest acupuncture and acupressure 
may be efficacious in decreasing arterial blood 
pressure in hypertensive patients,'' B. Lu and 
colleagues conclude.

Further studies will need to address the mechanism 
by which the therapies lower blood pressure, the 
researchers note.

SOURCE: American Journal of Hypertension 
2000;13:185A-186A.