How 15 minutes of yoga daily can help beat high blood pressure

YOGA could be as effective as a commonly prescribed pill in cutting blood pressure, a study has indicated.

The research found that volunteers with elevated levels of blood pressure saw improvements after doing just 15 minutes of the activity daily.

About 12million British adults are on prescription drugs for high blood pressure, which is the single biggest trigger of heart disease and stroke.

But in the study, which monitored 60 volunteers with raised blood pressure, it was found that doing just 15 minutes of exercises such as the “downward dog” five times a week reduced their readings by around 10 per cent.

Scientists said it is a similar reduction to that typically experienced by patients taking a diuretic pill, which stops water retention and is commonly given for high blood pressure.

Ashok Pandey, a 16-year-old who carried out the study as a school project, said participants were asked to do simple yoga poses, relaxation, stretches or deep breathing.

After three months, the yoga group saw their blood pressure drop by 9.7 per cent. That compares with a typical drop of 10-20 per cent in patients using diuretics. Those doing deep breathing saw readings fall by 7.1 per cent, while stretching reduced it by 4.5 per cent. Just taking time to relax had no effect.

The schoolboy’s paper, backed by the Cambridge Cardiac Care Centre in Canada, was presented at the European Society of Cardiology conference in Munich. He said: “The results suggest that yoga could be an important tool to reduce blood pressure.

“These are simple poses that don’t require a lot of flexibility. It could be applied on a much broader scale.

“A large proportion of the benefit could be attributed to deep breathing.

“It is clinically relevant. It should not be used as a replacement for existing treatments, it’s about incorporating yoga into existing programmes.”

Ashok is now recruiting 500 people to take part in a further trial at Laval University in Quebec.

Metin Avkiran, the British Heart Foundation’s associate medical director, said: “Alternative approaches, such as yoga, could help people with high blood pressure. But they shouldn’t replace proven methods which lower blood pressure, including leading a healthy lifestyle and taking prescribed medications when recommended by a GP.”