[Evermont]

I'm not sure if this technique is useful, but I sure find it interesting. Given that stress is known to raise both blood sugar and pressure, I got myself a book-on-mp3 about meditation and tried it out.

My blood pressure usually runs just a little on the high side both at the doctor's office and in home testing. Doctor visits don't really bother me so the numbers are consistently like 145/90 give or take.

Twice now I've done this experiment. I get to the doctors office 10-15 minutes early and practice a relaxation breathing technique I learned. The results are impressive, lowest numbers I've ever seen. 120/68 for example. The doc didn't like the nurses reading so she retested me and it was yet slightly lower.

I think doc was skeptical when I told her what was going on, but she sure backed off of the idea of putting me on meds for blood pressure.

To find out if this is truly useful I need to experiment more to see how long the effects last. It's just not my highest priority right now but I'll get to it. The question is if this is only good for faking out the doctor or if I can make it a habit and use it to keep the numbers lower all the time or especially to shave off the peaks when stress is at its worst. Too bad there's no A1c-like 3 month average for stress or BP.

Either way, its easy to do and it's free. Actually it generally feels good too so I have a hard time imagining why more people don't do it regularly - myself included.