Research says that practicing mindfulness can help people better manage their high blood pressure by helping them stick to healthy lifestyle changes. An eight-week customized mindfulness program helped people lower their systolic blood pressure by nearly six points during a six-month follow-up period.

That was significantly better than the 1.4-point reduction that occurred in people undergoing usual blood pressure care.

“If we can train people in mindfulness skills and then apply those skills to people’s relationships with the things that we know influence blood pressure — such as physical activity or diet or antihypertensive medication adherence or alcohol consumption — we might be able to boost the effects” of their prescribed blood pressure control plan, said lead researcher Eric Loucks, director of the Mindfulness Center at Brown University.

For example, in this study participants armed with mindfulness training tended to exercise more and eat better.

Loucks and his colleagues recruited about 100 people with elevated and untreated blood pressure to attend weekly group training sessions in mindfulness. These people also went to an all-day mindfulness retreat. Mindfulness training enhances people’s self-awareness of their own thoughts, emotions and physical sensations, helping them pay attention to their responses and regulate their emotions, Loucks said.

In this instance, mindfulness helps people perceive and acknowledge how they feel after they make good choices that improve their blood pressure, he said.