Impact of alternate nostril breathing exercises on vascular parameters in hypertensive patients - An interventional study

Previous studies on hypertensives had shown that alternate nostril breathing (ANB) exercises reduce sympathetic activity by decreasing systolic and diastolic pressure. Since the effect of ANB on blood vessels was not documented so far, the present study was done to confirm the sympathetic lowering effect of ANB on vessel wall parameters immediately after 30 min of ANB exercises. According to new American College of Cardiology/ American Heart Association 2017 Hypertension Guidelines, Prehypertension is characterized by systolic BP between 130 and 139 and diastolic BP between 80 and 89 and stage I Hypertension between 140 and 159 and 90-99 mmHg. MATERIALS AND METHODS The present study was conducted in the department of radiodiagnosis of a private medical college hospital in Madurai. 40 hypertensive subjects in the age group of 45-65 years of both the genders with mean systolic BP between 130 and 160 mmHg and diastolic BP between 86 and 106 mmHg attending general medicine operative between March and July 2017 were chosen by simple random sampling. 20 hypertensive subjects were assigned to the study (ANB) group who practiced ANB exercises and 20 to non-interventional (control) group who do not do any breathing exercise, randomly using a randomization sequence generated in Microsoft Excel. [...]for 1 min, there will be 6 breathing cycles so that the respiratory rate could be maintained at 6/min.