Mindfulness with paced breathing and lowering blood pressure

September 9, 2020

Science Daily/Florida Atlantic University

Now more than ever, Americans and people all over the world are under increased stress, which may adversely affect their health and well-being. Researchers explore the possibility that mindfulness with paced breathing reduces blood pressure. One of the most plausible mechanisms is that paced breathing stimulates the vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous system, which reduce stress chemicals in the brain and increase vascular relaxation that may lead to lowering of blood pressure.

According to the American Stroke Association (ASA) and the American Heart Association (AHA), more than 100 million Americans have high blood pressure. Elevated blood pressure is a major avoidable cause of premature morbidity and mortality in the United States and worldwide due primarily to increased risks of stroke and heart attacks. Elevated blood pressure is the most important major and modifiable risk factor to reduce stroke. In fact, small but sustained reductions in blood pressure reduce risks of stroke and heart attacks. Therapeutic lifestyle changes of weight loss and salt reduction as well as adjunctive drug therapies are beneficial to treat and prevent high blood pressure.

Mindfulness is increasingly practiced as a technique to reduce stress through mind and body interactions. In some instances, mindfulness includes paced breathing defined as deep and diaphragmatic with slow rates typically about five to seven per minute compared with the usual rate of 12 to 14. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt College of Medicine and collaborators have published a paper in the journal Medical Hypotheses, exploring the possibility that mindfulness with paced breathing reduces blood pressure.

"One of the most plausible mechanisms is that paced breathing stimulates the vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous system, which reduce stress chemicals in the brain and increase vascular relaxation that may lead to lowering of blood pressure," said Suzanne LeBlang, M.D., a neuroradiologist, second and corresponding author, and an affiliate associate professor in FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine.

The researchers believe the hypothesis they have formulated that mindfulness with paced breathing reduces blood pressure should be tested. To do so, FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine co-authors are already collaborating with their co-authors from the Marcus Neuroscience Institute, Boca Raton Regional Hospital/ Baptist Health South; and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health on an investigator-initiated research grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health. The initial pilot trial would include obtaining informed consent from willing and eligible subjects and assigning them at random to mindfulness either with or without paced breathing and examining whether there are sustained effects on lowering blood pressure.

"This pilot randomized trial might lead to further randomized trials of intermediate markers such as inhibition of progression of carotid intimal thickening or coronary artery atherosclerosis, and subsequently, a large scale trial to reduce stroke and heart attacks," said Charles H. Hennekens, M.D., Dr.PH, senior author, first Sir Richard Doll Professor and senior academic advisor in FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine. "Achieving sustained reductions in blood pressure of 4 to 5 millimeters of mercury decreases risk of stroke by 42 percent and heart attacks by about 17 percent; so positive findings would have important clinical and policy implications."

According to the ASA and AHA, cardiovascular disease (CVD), principally heart attacks and strokes, accounts for more than 800,000 deaths or 40 percent of total mortality in the U.S. each year and more than 17 million deaths worldwide. In the U.S., CVD is projected to remain the single leading cause of mortality and is rapidly becoming so worldwide. Stroke alone ranks fifth in all-cause mortality in the U.S., killing nearly 133,000 people annually as well as more than 11 percent of the population worldwide.

"Now more than ever, Americans and people all over the world are under increased stress, which may adversely affect their health and well-being," said Barbara Schmidt, co-author, teacher, researcher, philanthropist, bestselling author of "The Practice," as well as an adjunct instructor at FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine. "We know that mindfulness decreases stress and I am cautiously optimistic that mindfulness with paced breathing will produce sustained lowering of blood pressure."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200909100214.htm

Ten minutes of massage or rest will help your body fight stress

September 18, 2020

Science Daily/University of Konstanz

Allowing yourself a few minutes of downtime significantly boosts mental and physical relaxation. Research by psychologists at the University of Konstanz observed higher levels of psychological and physiological relaxation in people after only ten minutes of receiving a massage. Even ten minutes of simple rest increased relaxation, albeit to a lesser degree than massage. The findings, reported on 8 September 2020 in the journal Scientific Reports, provide the first indication that short-term treatments can robustly reduce stress on a psychological and physiological level by boosting the body's principal engine for relaxation -- the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS).

Stress is known to have negative consequences for health and disease. However, our bodies have an inbuilt regenerative system, the PNS, to ward off stress during times of threat. Launching a relaxation response is thus key to protecting our health and restoring balance in our body. Massage has been used to improve relaxation, yet no systematic approach exists to robustly confirm its effect on the PNS and whether or not this could be used as rehabilitation for patients suffering from stress-related disease.

Boosting the body's engine for relaxation 

This study indicates that massage is an easy-to-apply intervention that can boost the body's principal engine for relaxation -- the PNS -- and also lead to a reduction in perceived mental stress. The discovery that massage is effective on the level of both psychology and physiology via the PNS will pave the way for future studies on understanding the role of relaxation on stress.

"To get a better handle on the negative effects of stress, we need to understand its opposite -- relaxation," says Jens Pruessner, head of the Neuropsychology lab and Professor at the Cluster of Excellence "Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour" at the University of Konstanz. "Relaxation therapies show great promise as a holistic way to treat stress, but more systematic scientific appraisal of these methods is needed."

Standardised testing approach 

Researchers from the Department of Psychology in Konstanz developed a standardised approach for testing if tactile stimulation could improve mental and physical relaxation. They applied two different ten-minute massages on human subjects in the laboratory to test: A head-and-neck massage was designed to actively stimulate the PNS by applying moderate pressure on the vagal nerve, which is the largest nerve running to the PNS. Then a neck-and-shoulder massage with soft stroking movements was designed to examine whether just touch can also be relaxing. Finally, a control group of participants sitting quietly at a table was tested for the effect of rest without tactile stimulation. Physiological relaxation was gauged by monitoring the heart rate of participants and measuring heart rate variability (HRV), which indicates how flexibly the PNS can respond to changes in the environment. The higher the HRV, the more relaxed is the body. Psychological relaxation was gauged by asking participants to describe how relaxed or stressed they feel.

Ten minutes of resting or receiving either massage resulted in psychological and physiological reduction in stress. All participants reported that they felt more relaxed, and less stressed, compared with before the treatments. Further, all participants showed significant increases in heart rate variability, which demonstrates that the PNS was activated and the body physiologically relaxed just by resting alone. The physiological effect was more pronounced when participants received a massage. It was, however, not important whether the massage was soft or moderate -- tactile contact in general seemed to improve the relaxation of the body.

Small moments with big impact 

"We are very encouraged by the findings that short periods of dis-engagement are enough to relax not just the mind but also the body," says Maria Meier, a doctoral student in the lab of Neuropsychology and first author on the study. "You don't need a professional treatment in order to relax. Having somebody gently stroke your shoulders, or even just resting your head on the table for ten minutes, is an effective way to boost your body's physiological engine of relaxation."

By developing a standardised method for robustly testing and validating relaxation therapies, the study allows further experiments to test the effects of additional relaxation interventions that could be used in prevention or rehabilitation programmes for people suffering from stress-related diseases such as depression.

"Massage, being such a commonly used relaxation therapy, was our first study," says Meier. "Our next step is to test if other short interventions, like breathing exercises and meditation, show similar psychological and physiological relaxation results."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200918104305.htm