Mindfulness against high blood pressure
Hypertension is a sneaky silent killer. You can suffer from it without even realizing it, so your high blood pressure can cause a lot of damage in your body that can eventually lead to serious cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack, heart failure, stroke or thrombosis. If you already know you suffer from high blood pressure or want to prevent high blood pressure, mindfulness can play a role in this.
Therefore, in this article I will discuss what high blood pressure is, the risks involved and how mindfulness can help against high blood pressure.
Blood pressure
Having blood pressure is essential to the functioning of your body. This is because it means that your heart is working normally and that you are alive. As your heart pumps, your blood flows through your veins and your blood cells carry all kinds of important substances to the cells in your body.
Blood flows at a certain rate and that presses on your blood walls. You can use a blood pressure monitor to measure how much pressure your blood puts on the walls. Normally, people have a negative pressure of 90 and an upper pressure of 120 or slightly lower.
Upper pressure is the pressure your blood gives off on your veins when your heart has been pumping. The negative pressure is the pressure your blood gives between heartbeats. This is a bit like when you are in a rowboat. When you make a rowing (pumping) motion with the oars your boat moves through the water faster than when you take the oar out of the water and bring it forward again, which is a kind of resting moment. Your boat (blood) keeps moving, but you still go a lot slower.
You suffer from hypertension if your lower pressure is above 100 and your upper pressure is above 140.
Dangers of high blood pressure
I already started this blog to explain that high blood pressure is a sneaky silent killer. That's because if you walk around with high blood pressure for an extended period of time in a row, it can cause all kinds of damage in your body without you even noticing.
For example, high blood pressure can damage the cells on the inside of your blood vessels. This creates very small dents in your blood vessels. This is bad in several ways. First, cholesterol can settle in those dents, which can cause plaque formation.
Second, this is bad because your body is doing repair work that causes your blood walls to become thicker and less flexible. This actually just keeps your blood pressure rising because the balloon doesn't stretch anymore. As a result, you may even end up with internal bleeding, because what won't bend will burst.
High blood pressure and your organs
In addition, high blood pressure is also dangerous to your organs. Your heart, kidneys and brain suffer from high blood pressure.
This is because your heart has to work hard if you suffer from high blood pressure. This can cause your heart to become enlarged, making it struggle even more. This is because the ventricles from which the blood is pumped out become larger, requiring your heart to make a much greater movement than usual.
Your kidneys can also perform their cleansing function less well. As a result, you also lose less fluid so there is more blood than normal in your blood vessels and the tension on this also increases and thus you have higher blood pressure.
Because there is extra blood in your system, your brain also swells. You may notice this by a headache. The risk of this is that you can get a brain hemorrhage. This can cause you to develop all sorts of other symptoms, such as speech impairment and paralysis.
So the dangers of high blood pressure are not amiss. Fortunately, there is much you can do to prevent high blood pressure and lower it if you already suffer from it.
Lowering high blood pressure with mindfulness
Poor diet, a sedentary lifestyle, and prolonged stress are often the causes of high blood pressure. A stressful job where you have a manager constantly looking over your shoulder, or where you’re the manager of people who simply don’t do what you tell them to do, can already lead to chronic stress.
Family life can also be very demanding. Research also shows that although men and women have the same amount of free time, for most women it doesn’t feel that way because they often feel responsible for the atmosphere at home or at a party. Mindfulness can also be used for these kinds of everyday stressful moments to keep blood pressure at normal levels.
Unfortunately, poor health is also a source of stress that doesn't do your health any good either. Especially with long-term debilitating illnesses, such as cancer, you can suffer greatly from stress when it is precisely then that you want to live as healthily as possible so as not to make the situation worse.
Mindfulness can primarily be used to combat stress. Several mindfulness methods have been developed for people who are likely to suffer from stress, such as those with chronic illnesses. Research shows that the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program can be used to lower high blood pressure, among other things. This study was conducted among 49 women with breast cancer and 10 men with prostate cancer.
The study involved mindfulness meditation, sitting meditation, mindfulness yoga, body scan and other mindfulness techniques, such as mindfulness eating and mindfulness walking.
This study found that mindfulness had positive effects on stress levels. Cortisollevels, the stress hormone, were a lot lower after six months and even a year after learning mindfulness techniques and actually applying them.
Another study with a completely different group of participants also showed that mindfulness can make a significant difference in lowering hypertension.
Mindfulness exercises to lower high blood pressure
Applying mindfulness meditation ensures that you are in the here and now with your thoughts. Usually thoughts about your fears and worries are the reason why you suffer from stress. By living in the here and now, you can better keep those thoughts away.
In addition, mindfulness offers another way to identify yourself less with those thoughts, reducing their impact on your stress levels. In mindfulness meditation, you focus on the here and now, whatever it is you're doing. Especially if you are doing things where your thoughts can naturally go in all directions, it is wise to apply mindfulness meditation, such as when doing household chores.
You are then aware of your breathing and the movements your body makes to perform the task at hand. How the tool you are using feels, let's take a sponge for car washing as an example. How the water spreads over your car and how every speck disappears when you go over it with the sponge.
Then comes that thought about your presentation, doctor's appointment, or anything else that stresses you out. What you do then with mindfulness is to name these thoughts. You name the subject of your thought, such as doctor or work, and the emotion that comes with it, such as uncertainty. Then you shift your attention back to your breathing, the feeling of your body during the activity you are doing and your environment.
This may not go well all at once. This doesn't matter, mindfulness is also something where practice makes art.
Mindfulness eating
Another way to lower your blood pressure through mindfulness is by eating mindfully. A diet that’s too high in fat and salt can cause high blood pressure. By eating mindfully—a practice that starts right at the grocery store—you can prevent yourself from (unconsciously) eating too much of these foods.
With mindfulness eating, just like any other mindfulness meditation, you are in the here and now. This means that you see, smell and taste your food while eating and are consciously engaged in this. By eating this way, you are much less likely to eat just anything and it is easier to keep your portions acceptable and eat healthier.
Mindfulness yoga
Don’t forget about mindfulness yoga, either. With mindfulness yoga, you’re actually killing two birds with one stone. You’re relaxing and reducing stress, while also engaging in a gentle form of exercise and stretching your muscles. Because you hold the poses for 30 to 60 seconds, yoga is a great way to make your muscles stronger and more flexible.
Research also shows that yoga can help lower your average heart rate and reduce cortisol, and thus stress.
With mindful eating and mindfulness yoga, you can always use the second step to suffer less from thoughts that trigger stress reactions.
Would you also like to learn more about how mental techniques can influence your quality of life? Then come to a seminar or check out the courses offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands.
Sources:
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0889159107000852?via=sd
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11524-011-9654-6
http://www.ctcpjournal.com/article/S1744-3881(10)00079-4/abstract