Do you want a lifestyle prescription or do you want lower blood pressure?

“Lose weight! Exercise! Stop eating junk from fast food joints!” Don’t you get tired of hearing it sometimes?

Sure, we all know the importance of a healthy lifestyle, especially for keeping our blood pressure under control. But a lot of “experts” don’t seem to live in the real world. Shifting a hundred pounds doesn’t happen overnight. And what about the sales rep or the truck driver stuck behind the wheel 10 hours a day? What if you’re a desk jockey putting in overtime to put bread on the table? (and wouldn’t you know it? – healthy fare is often more expensive than junk food!) Or what if you simply enjoy one or two guilty pleasures?

In the past, if you were “lifestyle-challenged” you didn’t have any encouraging prospects for dealing with hypertension. You could go the medical route and test-drive a dizzying array of powerful prescription medicines. Success (for your doctor, anyway) would come with just the right drug and dosage to keep you perched between hypertension and intolerable side effects. These could be anything from mildly annoying to life-altering (particularly for the gents!).

Or you could go the alternative route: every few months you take up the latest natural miracle everyone is raving about. You get your hopes up only to discover sooner or later that it does nothing at all for you. But hey, there’s always another one coming along just in time. And so it goes… I was once a serial herb and supplement user myself. At least natural remedies are (usually) safe and free of side effects. On the other hand, they can be even more expensive than prescription drugs!

So what are you to do? Try not to fret about it too much, for one thing, or it might raise your blood pressure even further! But on the positive side, finally, there’s a natural method that’s proven to work consistently regardless of your level of hypertension, your medications or your lifestyle.

This method is truly different because you don’t consume anything. Nor is it time consuming, tedious or strenuous and, best of all, you can even do it for free. It’s called slow breathing and it only takes 15 minutes a day.

Now, for those inevitable few who may be thinking: “Oh no! Not another flaky alternative therapy” let me assure you that slow breathing is the first natural method clinically proven to lower high blood pressure. Its success has been verified repeatedly in randomized, double-blind trials – the same kind of testing as used for drugs.

Slow breathing is simple, like most things in life that really work. The technique involves just two things:

1) breathing slowly and deeply at a rate below 10 breaths per minute (around 6 per minute is ideal), and

2) extending your exhale phase to about twice the length of your inhale. Then there’s one other vital ingredient: relaxation. The more relaxed you are, the greater the benefits.

Breathing in this way while in a state of deep relaxation for 15 minutes a day is proven to reduce high blood pressure. One session alone has been shown to drop blood pressure 20 to 30 points, although the effects after just once would be temporary. However, if you continue to practice it the effects are cumulative and become long-lasting after several weeks of slow breathing. Lasting reductions of up to 50 over 20 have been documented.

Of course, counting your breathing for 15 minutes is about as relaxing as watching paint dry. Fortunately, that’s not the way you have to do it. A new method called Breatheasy combines a synthesized guided breathing soundtrack with beautiful, relaxing music.

The music together with the breathing track is incredibly relaxing. There’s no “stalker in the bushes” effect to the breathing because the sound is natural but not human; it was developed from the sound of an ocean wave. The breathing track provides an easy way to follow and learn the right breathing pattern while relaxing to the music. You have to have the breathing because blood pressure reduction from relaxation alone tends to be only temporary.

So finally there’s an easy, quick and reliable way to lower blood pressure, regardless of your circumstances. I can’t imagine anyone without 15 minutes a day, even those too lazy to exercise and develop a healthy lifestyle… people like me!

Of course, this is not intended to advocate a neglect of healthy living and personal responsibility. But you can depend on slow breathing to produce quick results while struggling for a better lifestyle and the long-term health benefits that brings. Heck, slow breathing is great for fit and healthy people too! In addition to lowered blood pressure it also reduces stress and anxiety, improves your sleep and offers a host of related benefits.

And, crucially, it puts control of a vital aspect of your health into your own hands – and this is something at the very heart of a healthy lifestyle approach.

Finally, we should also recognize that high blood pressure has many causes and lifestyle is not always at fault. That’s something you won’t often hear elsewhere. When I was battling hypertension I finally discovered that my lifestyle had nothing to do with it. And slow breathing was the only thing that worked for me in the end.