High blood pressure is common — almost half of Americans have it. But there are things you can do to manage it.
Although hypertension usually requires medication, certain lifestyle changes may help lower your blood pressure, such as eating a healthy diet, exercising, losing weight, quitting smoking and cutting back on alcohol.
A positive mindset also may help. Research suggests regularly practicing mindfulness and possibly optimism and gratitude may have a beneficial effect on your blood pressure, too.
“Stress contributes to hypertension,” said Willie E. Lawrence Jr., a cardiologist and spokesman for the American Heart Association. “It’s hard to get all the stress out of your life, but there are things that you can do to lower blood pressure, like mindfulness.”
Here’s what to know about three mental health habits that may help.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness — focusing attention on your thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations in the present moment, without any judgment — may help reduce your blood pressure. This is partly because of stress reduction, but also because it can help you stick with healthy habits.
That may mean eating less salt or being more active, for instance — “the things that science shows works,” said Eric Loucks, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Mindfulness Center at Brown University.
A mindfulness-based blood pressure reduction program that Loucks developed at Brown University teaches people mindfulness skills such as self-awareness, attention control and emotional regulation, then shows them how to apply those skills to things that reduce blood pressure, such as diet, Loucks said.
People may practice this with a specific food that tempts them — noticing how it affects their thoughts, emotions and physical sensations.
“There can be energy that comes up to act on those insights,” he said. “So if we decide we want to eat more healthily, can we be there with that energy in the grocery store, selecting the food for the week?”
You can also try finding a yoga class or meditation group. Yoga can encourage you to focus on your breath and body movements, and research suggests it can help relieve stress. But check with your doctor before trying new physical activities, including yoga, since some poses may require you to bring your head lower than your heart, which may not be good for those with high blood pressure, Loucks said.
Also, clinical trials have shown that silent mediation in which you sit with your eyes closed can lower blood pressure in people with or without hypertension, according to guidelines from the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association. And meditating with a group has an added benefit. “The loneliness epidemic is pretty big these days, so mindfulness and meditation groups can help alleviate that as well,” Loucks said.
Optimism
Research suggests that optimism, which in the simplest terms is viewing the future in a positive way, may have a positive effect on overall heart health, and that people who are optimistic may be less likely to develop high blood pressure. A study of more than 100,000 U.S. Army active-duty soldiers without high blood pressure found that those who were most optimistic were less likely to develop it during an average of three and a half years that they were followed.
However, there is little evidence that an optimistic mindset can lower blood pressure in people who already have hypertension, said Julia Boehm, professor and chair of the psychology department at Chapman University in Orange, California.
To try it, consider practicing optimistic thinking. It’s common to think about the worst-case scenario, particularly when problems arise. Instead, focus on how a situation could work out for the best, said Christopher Celano, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and associate director of the Cardiac Psychiatry Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital.
If you’re searching for a job, for instance, think of the best possible outcome, then think of things you can do to make it more likely to happen, Celano said. “That oftentimes helps people to identify what’s meaningful for them and also helps give them more confidence to be able to take the steps to reach their goals,” he said.
More specifically, think of things within your control related to your health such as your diet. “This might mean something concrete like, ‘Am I going to choose to eat the salad or the french fries at lunch?’ and thinking optimistically that my choices in any given moment are going to translate into measurable effects in the long run,” Boehm said.
Gratitude
Some research suggests practicing gratitude could also help with hypertension, Celano said, though he did note that the evidence isn’t very strong. As with optimism, it’s possible the benefit may be related to how a positive mindset affects overall heart health.
To try practicing gratitude — feeling thankful for your circumstances or for what others have done for you — you can jot down things you’re grateful for in a journal or write letters to family and friends, telling them why you’re grateful for them. One study found that writing a gratitude letter changed how systolic blood pressure rose during a stress test, suggesting that gratitude may have a positive effect on cardiovascular reactions to stress.
Or you can share your thoughts of gratitude with loved ones around the dinner table, for instance. Then focus on how the things that you’re grateful for make you feel.
These practices may help you reduce stress overall, but it’s important to note that they are only one component of living a healthy life, Boehm said.
“You can’t ignore the doctor’s advice to either take your medications or engage in physical activity or eat fruits and vegetables,” she said. “It’s just one piece of a larger strategy to bolster health.”
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