Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction for Prehypertension

Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction

What is it? Why should I care?

MBSR is an 8-week regimented stress reduction therapy based on mindfulness meditation, yoga, body scan meditations, and other practices.

Recently, mindfulness-based Stress reduction has become increasingly popular, and preliminary research has shown encouraging results with respect to it’s potential for reducing blood pressure (BP).

In other clinical studies it has proven effective at addressing chronic pain, anxiety, depression, and general stress reduction. The lasting results have been shown to persist up to 4 years after the course.

In short, mindfulness is awesome! Checkout UC Berkeley's article for more.

Why another study? What are they asking?

This study specifically assesses MBSR's capability of reducing blood pressure in adults with prehypertension. Prehypertension, while sounding fancy, is really just defined as elevated blood pressure, but not yet hypertensive (high blood pressure).

There have been many studies surrounding this topic (those discussing BP in normal adults, or even in children), but no study that focuses on this group. If successful, MBSR could used instead of or in conjuction with medication to lower BP.

This study (Randomized controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction for prehypertension.), asks whether MBSR can cause a significant reduction in BP in prehypertensive adults.

Method

Groups and Administration

As mentioned, MBSR is an 8-week stress therapy. Participants in the MBSR group met weekly in a group, practiced at home skills, and were asked to reflect on the present moment often.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) was also used in this program as a control therapy. In this program, participants gradually flexed and unflexed muscles. It was given in a similar fashion to MBSR, and has been proven NOT to lower BP in prehypertensive adults.
In both groups participants did not know what treatment they were recieving (blind study).

Measurements

To determine the effectiveness of MBSR (and the control), systolic and diastolic blood pressure were measured before and after each of the 8-week programs. For reference, systolic BP is the maximum blood pressure measured during ventricular contraction, and diastolic BP is the minimum blood pressure measured prior to ventricular contraction.

The measurements taken before the study served as a baseline to compare with post-study.

So, what happened?

Systolic: an average reduction of 4.8mmHg was observed in MBSR participants.
Diastolic: an average reduction of 1.9mmHg was observed in MBSR participants.

Systolic: an average reduction of 0.7mmHg was observed in PMR participants.
Diastolic: an average increase of 1.2mmHg was observed in PMR participants.

Overall, this study concludes that MBSR is an effective treatment for prehypertensive adults. Due to the small sample size, the authors maintain that more studies are needed to corroborate and determine proper MBSR dosage (Longer than 8-weeks? Shorter? Etc).

Moving Forward

This study was an excellent look into how professional research papers are written. Its analysis of mindfullness meditation shows the practice's benefits and possible uses, many of which could supplement or even replace medication (patient and doctor depended, obviously).

Less formally, I'm very happy I got the opportunity to read about something I can about, and in such depth. Hopefully everyone enjoys the website! (I may take it down one day, I only have 1 free page atm).

Peace!