People with high blood pressure are sometimes advised to reduce stress and breathe slowly from the diaphragm. To help people learn how to slow their breathing there is an FDA-approved medical device called RESPeRATE. It offers biofeedback on breath frequency through a set of headphones and gradually slows respirations below 10 per minute.
A new study from the Netherlands randomized more than 40 people with hypertension and type 2 diabetes. The volunteers listened to the RESPeRATE device or to a visually identical machine that paced people’s respirations to 14 breaths a minute. In this double-blind, placebo-controlled trial there was no difference between the groups after 8 weeks. The authors concluded that there was no benefit from this biofeedback device and that its use for helping to control hypertension should be reevaluated.
[JAMA Internal Medicine, July 22, 2013]
There is much more information on other nondrug approaches to easing hypertension in our Guide to Blood Pressure Treatment.
