Thursday, September 04, 2014WASHINGTON -- A $3.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will be used to explore whether lifestyle modification can help keep individuals with un-medicated hypertension off antihypertensive medication.
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-13 Ohio, announced the grant award, from NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, to Drs. David Fresco and Joel Hughes of Kent State University and Dr. Jeffrey Greeson of the University of Pennsylvania. The grant will fund a five-year study called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for High Blood Pressure.
Ryan was introduced to mindfulness in 2008 at a retreat organized by Jon Kabot-Zinn, author of Coming to Our Senses. In 2012 the congressman wrote A Mindful Nation, and has since given numerous presentations across the country on how mindfulness is used by high-performing athletes, CEOs and the U.S. Marines to improve focus and concentration.
Ryan also has secured research funds for studying how military veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder find relief through mind-body programs and for social and emotional learning programs in Youngstown and Warren public schools that incorporate mindfulness in the classroom.
“I am a relentless advocate and proponent of mindfulness-based stress reduction and have seen positive results in lowering stress and pain levels in both students and adults,” Ryan said. “I am excited about this proposal and congratulate Drs. Fresco, Hughes and Greeson on their hard work in securing this award. Too many of us have lifestyles that involve high levels of stress, which lead to high blood pressure and other health issues. The work of these doctors is a strong step in the direction of healthy living.”
The hypertension study, christened “the Serenity Study,” will recruit and treat 180 individuals from northeast Ohio (University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University) and Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania).
Patients in the study will receive one of two programs designed to help manage stress. Mindfulness-based stress reduction, which in prior research work was shown to reduce blood pressure in a smaller trial of patients from northeastern Ohio, will be compared to stress management education, another stress-reducing program that attempts to achieve stress management without teaching individuals about meditation.
"We’ve long known of a simple straight forward way to manage one’s blood pressure. It involves following a regimen of diet and exercise,” Fresco said. “Trouble is things that are simple are not always easy. Many of us struggle to follow a healthy lifestyle and stress makes it so much harder.”
Teaching individuals stress-management skills such as mindfulness meditation “may help them deal with stress head on and strengthen their resolve to make a healthy lifestyle a priority in their lives," Fresco explained.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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