You can tweak your physiology to lower your blood pressure with this nifty device

Hypertension is easily controllable through a combination of medications (calcium channel blockers, beta blockers and vasodilators like nitrates and ACE inhibitors) & lifestyle changes (quitting cessation, reducing salt in the diet, being more physcially active), but an interesting device claims to reduce blood pressure by simply changing the way one breathes.

It's not too wild an idea, for it's (almost) common knowledge that changing your breathing pattern to deeper, slower breaths that "go all the way down to the stomach" (in reality, down to the base of the lungs) can reduce symptoms of anxiety very swiftly.

According to its Amazon product page, this is what the product does specifically.

RESPeRATE is a portable, computerized electronic device that guides you through sessions of interactive, therapeutic breathing powerful enough to lower blood pressure.

Using a breathing sensor, RESPeRATE automatically analyzes your individual breathing pattern and creates a personalized melody composed of two distinct inhale and exhale guiding tones, delivered through comfortable earphones.

Of the 29 reviews, most are 4-5 stars (5 being the best score for an item sold on the webseller's site). Of course, there are limits to the device's effectiveness. One reviewer writes, "If your high plood pressure is caused by stress and the cares of life, RESPeRATE may work for you. But there is no mechanism by which it can address or cure arteriosclerosis."

And it is also costly at $299. Still, it may be cheaper than having to take a single medicine for 20 years (assuming co-pay for a generic remains $15). And the device is clearly superior than drugs in one regard: no side effects.

It is side effects that often bring patients to the hospital. And on the flip side, they compel people to not take their meds. This latter effect leads many patients to develop complications which end up requiring expensive and not-so-healthy hospital stays.

Does RESPeRATE work? Yes, according to a 2003 paper published in the American Journal of Hypertension. Titled "Nonpharmacologic Treatment of Resistant Hypertensives By Device-Guided Slow Breathing Exercises," it demonstrates that in those resistant to anti-hypertensives (i.e., who do not respond as desire to medications designed to lower blood pressure), the device lowers blood pressure by 12.9 on avergae in systolic pressure and 6.4 in diastolic pressure. Not drastic reductions, but reductions nonetheless. And it encourages compliance because of no side effects. Unfortunately the sample size is too small at n=17 to extrapolate the results with certainty among the general hypertensive population.

Still, the team that developed RESPeRATE deserves praise for challenging a health problem in a novel way that uses the body's own mechanisms to promote good health, and in a way that may be cheaper and certainly eliminates side effects and increases patients' compliance.