A nine-week mindfulness training course helped hypertensive patients lower their blood pressure and improve healthy habits in a study out of the Mindfulness Center at Brown University’s School of Public Health.
The study, penned by Eric Loucks, an associate professor of epidemiology, behavioral and social sciences and medicine at Brown, and colleagues, was published in PLOS ONE on Nov. 27. It analyzed the efficacy of Loucks et al.’s Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction (MB-BP) program in managing 43 patients’ high blood pressure.
“We know enough about hypertension that we can theoretically control it in everybody, yet in about half of all people diagnosed, it is still out of control,” Loucks said in a release. “Mindfulness may represent another approach to helping these people by bringing their blood pressure down, by allowing them to understand what’s happening in their minds and bodies.”
The Mayo Clinic describes mindfulness as “a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgement.” The idea isn’t for a person to clear their mind of thoughts completely—that’s a common misconception—but rather to notice and accept their current reality.
Loucks et al.’s MB-BP program employed mindfulness to enhance patients’ attention control, emotional regulation and self-awareness of healthy and unhealthy habits. Mindfulness techniques were interwoven with other BP-lowering measures like medication reminders and educational write-ups. Loucks said future studies might explore the efficacy of mindfulness alone in reducing hypertensive patients’ blood pressure, “but mindfulness training is usually designed to be integrated with standard medical care.”
The authors reported that after completing the nine-week program, patients saw significant improvements in their self-regulation skills and exhibited lower blood pressure readings. Those who hadn’t been complying with the American Heart Association’s recommendations for salt and alcohol intake and physical activity also improved in those areas.
Loucks and colleagues said the positive effects of their module were sustained through one year of patient follow-up, with benefits most pronounced in those who enrolled with higher stages of uncontrolled hypertension. People who entered the study with stage 2 uncontrolled hypertension—a systolic BP of 140 mm Hg or greater—experienced an average 15.1 mm Hg reduction in their blood pressure.
The authors are reportedly working on a follow-up study of the MB-BP program involving more than 200 participants.
“I hope that these projects will lead to a paradigm shift in terms of the treatment options for people with high blood pressure,” Loucks said. “The hope is that if we can start mindfulness training early in life, we can promote a trajectory of healthy aging across the rest of people’s lives. That will reduce their chances of getting high blood pressure in the first place.”
After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.