July 31, 2009
Deep breathing for lower blood pressure
Deep or slow breathing for lower blood pressure has become an established treatment for hypertension in recent years. But many people experience negative effects like dizziness and anxiety when trying it. These ill effects are almost always due to breathing too strenuously and too deeply. In other words, it’s a result of hyperventilation.
Natural health promoters and gurus have been advising us on the benefits of deep breathing for decades. But the description “deep” is the problem. These “experts” claim that we don’t get enough oxygen but exactly the opposite is true. And all sorts of health problems are caused by over-breathing.
This is the basis of the Buteyko method of breathing, which shares a lot of similarities with “slow breathing” used to lower blood pressure. People need to slow down their breathing and breathe more gently, not deeply. Deep breathing almost always results in the negative effects and anxiety that people report.