Researchers Explore How A 5-Minute Daily Breath Practice Can Lower Blood Pressure

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death here in the U.S., with doctors often prescribing medication and exercise to help people strengthen their respiratory muscles. But according to new research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, there's a simple, five-minute breathing technique that could be just as effective as meds or exercise for lowering high blood pressure, a major risk factor of cardiovascular disease. Here's what it found.

Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training, or IMST, was first developed to help people with severe respiratory disease strengthen their breathing muscles. It involves inhaling through a handheld device that resists your inhale, forcing you to inhale harder and more deeply. These devices are inexpensive and available online.

They had 36 adults (ages 50 to 79) with elevated blood pressure participate, with half of them doing high-resistance IMST for 30 inhalations (about five minutes) six days a week, and the other half doing a low-resistance placebo method.

Most notably, these improvements were just as good, if not better, than the benefits seen with aerobic exercise and medication. As lead author and assistant research professor Daniel Craighead, Ph.D., says in a news release, "We found not only is [high resistance IMST] more time-efficient than traditional exercise programs, the benefits may be longer-lasting."

And while you're at it, practicing mindfulness, doing Pilates, stretching, and eating a plant-based diet have also been tied to BP-lowering benefits of their own.