Patriot Health Digest
A new study has discovered that performing 5 minutes of breathing exercises does wonders to lower your blood pressure and is as effective as medication, according to scientists at CU Boulder.
These breathing exercises are a certain type of inhaling to pull in oxygen deep within your lungs, named Muscular Strength Training, which is said to be like working out your lung muscles by deeply inhaling to get the best results.
The study was released in the Journal of the American Heart and reveals how “High-Resistance Inspiratory Muscle Training” or a form of bringing in air through a device, seems to help people with heart diseases lower their blood pressure and other vital health numbers that can show an elevated stroke or heart attack risk.
Breathing deeply can reduce your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part of your brain that informs your body to rest and relax, and lower your blood pressure.
Deep and slow breathing has been used for ages to reduce blood pressure, but this study reveals that vigorous “lung training” might work for a longer time.
Created for people who need to help their breathing, either due to a chronic condition or recovering from a lung infection, or they have experienced another health event like heart surgery, IMST breathing, as it is called, involves inhaling through a hand-held device and doing so as strongly as possible, while the tube works against your efforts by bring the air in the opposite direction.
Some of these products (which are available on Amazon for around $56) are marketed to aid singers or teachers to boost their lung power or athletes who need to improve their air uptake. Traditionally doctors who have recommended IMST have told their patients to do these inhalation exercises for up to 30 minutes each day, but more recently they have witnessed patients getting benefits from doing it for only 30 inhales per day.
Bottom Line: To reduce your blood pressure over the long term, eat a better diet of foods that are minimally processed and do 30 minutes of moderate to heavy exercise each day. But if you want an additional way to lower blood pressure, breathing exercises can help.
Author: Steven Sinclaire
