Tai Chi as a Therapy for Hypertension
According to research published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine on October 9th, 2003, Tai Chi “may lower blood pressure and result in positive lipid profile modifications and enhance patients’ anxiety level.” There is a good chance that Tai Chi might be employed as an alternate mode of treatment for moderate hypertension with an economically viable outcome. This research outlined a strategy to save society’s resources by saving billions of dollars a year and possibly saving some individuals with moderate chronic hypertension from the potentially harmful side effects of long-term treatment. However, this hasn’t been the case to date.
There was an explanation for this when I stayed in an Ecuadorian mountain village with a lady who was well-known for her expertise in Indian remedies. As the Indian lady led them around her herbal gardens, a group of young American medical students paused to listen and learn. A group of brilliant medical students who were following me asked if they had heard that Tai Chi could help lower blood pressure.”Oh, yeah, I’ve heard that, but I would never recommend it,” one attractive young lady said.
She said she couldn’t because she didn’t know whether it would work, and I was perplexed. It is true that Tai Chi reduces high blood pressure in some people, but it does not work for everyone. That being said, it is also true that not all prescriptions work for all people. During one of those visits, my doctor pulled out a prescription pad and explained: “Let’s try this and see how it works for you.” And if it does not do the job, we’ll try something else. ” I suggested to the young medical student that she think about how many times I’ve been to the doctor. Most of us have seen this before, and the student’s perplexed expression suggests that her mind is recalling previous scenes.
Why are our medical schools teaching students that they should not prescribe Tai Chi because we know that it may help decrease high blood pressure for many who, if it is effective with them, can have a lifetime free of chronic and expensive medications? A stronger immune system and a more functional respiratory system are only the beginning of the benefits. As patients and customers, we need to ask ourselves this question often in order to live up to our hippocratic oath obligations. Health professionals should do the same. Due to our improved knowledge of Tai Chi’s potential, medical schools no longer have an excuse to instruct their students without informing them about the current state of Tai Chi research and the implications it has for their future patients.
Now we have a better understanding of why Tai Chi is so beneficial for those with high blood pressure. In a March 17, 2005, article on mayoclinic.com, the Mayo Clinic explains what a “stress reaction” is and how it affects the body. This is the root cause of hypertension and the physical alterations that are induced as a result of chronic stress reactions.
The pituitary gland releases an adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) that sets off a chain reaction that causes other glands to create more hormones, such as the adrenal glands that flood the bloodstream with stress hormones like “cortisol” and “adrenaline.” They describe this in their article.
When this sensation is triggered repeatedly, it may have a negative impact on the mind and body. This domino effect of hormones and triggers affects many of us on a daily basis, which is why over 90 million Americans, or one-third of the population, have high blood pressure.
A startling fact is being revealed by leading scientists like Dr. Herbert Benson, President of the Mind/Body Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. According to Jeanie Lerche Davis in her article The Mysterious ‘Medication’ of Meditation (http://my.webmd.com/contentarticle/25/1728/57992.htm), researchers are finding that “meditation can indeed be medication—creating long-lasting physical effects that reduce high blood pressure and even help unclog arteries to reverse heart disease.” “Davis writes,”
Dr. Benson, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, was interested in testing this impact scientifically, so he had five long-time meditators undergo MRI brain scans while they were in the meditative state of mind. According to WebMD’s Dr. Benson, “there was a stunning quietness over the whole brain, which was proven by MRI.” The parts of the brain responsible for regulating metabolism, heart rate, and other bodily functions become active as a result of this mental inactivity. But we could not verify it since we were not able to meditate ourselves. We were aware that the body would undergo physiologic changes if you repeatedly thought in a specific manner. Here is evidence that the mind impacts the brain, which affects the body in the form of repetition.
According to the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Amparo Castillo-Richmond of the Maharishi University in India conducted a study that focused specifically on high blood pressure in black people. They found that the thickness of one of their brain’s blood vessels had decreased while they meditated. Blood flow is increasing as a result. They noticed their artery walls thicken, which suggested that less blood was passing through to the brain in the group just doing diet and exercise. As a result of her research, Dr. Castillo-Richmond made the very intriguing claim that “heart disease may be reversed via meditation.”
As a matter of fact, according to Dr. Herbert Benson, stress is responsible for up to 90% of all of our medical visits, not just hypertension. The research by Drs. Benson and Castillo-discoveries Richmond’s that meditation practices may significantly change our stress-producing “fight or flight” reaction in a healthy manner is even more fantastic because of this.
For example, Dr. Benson says that repetitive forms like Tai Chi, Yoga, and Pilates may lead to reduced metabolic rate; lower heart rate; lower breathing rate; lower blood pressure; and slower brain waves. When it comes to dealing with stress-related symptoms such as anxiety, mild to moderate depression, hostility, hypertension, irregular heartbeats, and other physical or mental ailments, Benson believes that the repetitive nature of activities like praying the rosary or practicing yoga or tai chi offers the best chance of success.
This idea that Tai Chi may help lower blood pressure and a host of other health problems, or perhaps prevent them from occurring, has been mirrored elsewhere. Relax: Techniques to help you attain calm “by Mayoclinic.com also advises Tai Chi for relaxation training and discusses why it is vital to practice relaxation methods and what you could feel by doing so.
It explains how to slow down your heart rate, lower your blood pressure, and slow your breathing to save oxygen. They also explain how to increase blood flow to the muscles and reduce stress-induced tension in the muscles.
As a result of learning relaxation methods, they say, you may find that you have fewer physical symptoms like headaches and diarrhea; fewer emotional reactions like sobbing and rage; more capacity to manage stress; and greater efficiency in everyday chores. Even when we focus on one specific advantage of Tai Chi, such as decreasing high blood pressure, we discover a whole new world of possibilities.
According to an article in Archives of Internal Medicine, Tai Chi studies at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston have yielded a wealth of information. These studies concluded that long-term Tai Chi practice improved balance and flexibility, as well as cardiovascular fitness, and decreased the chance of falling in the elderly. Healthy patients, those who had had coronary artery bypass surgery, those with heart failure, hypertension, acute myocardial infarction, arthritis, and multiple sclerosis were all shown to have improved cardiovascular and respiratory performance. Balance, strength, and flexibility were also shown to be improved in older people, as well as falls in the elderly and pain, stress, and anxiety in healthy subjects. They say Tai Chi’s advantages aren’t well understood, and that’s a problem.
Yoga, meditation, tai chi, massage, herbal therapy, and aromatherapy are among the many alternative health systems that get less than.5% of the National Institutes of Health’s $28 billion (approximately) yearly budget, leaving them to fight for a little over $100 million of that amount. It’s mind-boggling to think that just a tiny percentage of health research expenditures are being spent on Tai Chi in light of the preceding findings.
To summarize, about one-third of the population of the United States suffers from hypertension. Even while Tai Chi does not have any negative side effects, it drastically strengthens the immune and respiratory systems, decreases the prevalence of anxiety and sadness, and greatly increases balance in its practitioners. There are many other benefits to Tai Chi, but for the purposes of this discussion, these are enough to show why it is truly unbelievable that Tai Chi is receiving so little attention from medical researchers, given that it can save so many people from chronic pain and perhaps some from a lifetime of costly chronic medications.
It is time we all began to ask the question that all good consumers should ask, “What is the greatest way/product for my health?” Why aren’t all doctors prescribing Tai Chi to their patients with hypertension? Tai Chi medicine isn’t covered by all insurance coverage, so why not? Ask, and it will be given to you. In order to acquire the finest health care alternatives, we must become knowledgeable and demanding customers.
This page does not advise self-treatment and recommends everyone consult with their physician before making any health-related decisions on their own. However, if your doctor is only open to a limited number of treatment alternatives, even when research shows that your possibilities may be far broader, it’s important to have a serious discussion with your doctor about your treatment options.
