In persons with hypertension there is decreased exercise tolerance and elevated total peripheral resistance due to autonomic imbalance. Slow breathing improves autonomic imbalance by reducing sympathetic overactivity in hypertensive patients.
To find the effect of slow breathing training on cardiorespiratory control and exercise capacity in patients with essential hypertension.
Medicine Out-Patient Department of a tertiary care hospital.
Randomized controlled trial.
Forty persons with essential hypertension of age group 35 – 60 years were recruited and randomly allocated in to 2 groups; experimental group (n=20), who received slow breathing exercises twice a week for 4 weeks along with pharmacological treatment and control group (n=20), who received pharmacological treatment alone. After 4 weeks, persons in both the groups were measured for outcome variables like submaximal exercise capacity by using 6 minute walk test (6 MWD), Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP), Diastolic Blood Pressure (DBP), Heart Rate(HR) and Respiratory Rate (RR).
A statistically significant difference was found in exercise group between pre and post intervention for all the outcome variables, whereas for control group no significant difference was found between pre and post intervention. Between the exercise and control group, a statistically significant difference was found for the variables, HR (P =0.009), SBP (P =0.012), DBP (P =0.000) and RR (P =0.000), but there was no significant difference in mean difference of 6 MWD (95% CI = -4.443, 2.543; P =0.585) between the groups.
Slow breathing training significantly improves cardiorespiratory control but it fails to improve the exercise capacity in patients with essential hypertension.
Slow breathing exercises, Blood pressure, Autonomic imbalance, Exercise tolerance, Sympathetic overactivity
