[Non-drug modification of high blood pressure]

Arterial essential patients with hypertension of the clinical degrees of severity I and II are treated either with physical training or with a psychophysiologically orientated therapy, in the centre of which stands the application of a breath-induced relaxation training. After a 4-week daily application the physical training led in 42% of the cases to a significant reduction of the blood pressure. These concerning the blood pressure trainable patients differed from the non-trainable patients among others by the following signs: higher systolic stress and recreation values before the beginning of the training, lower diastolic values, smaller familiar load by hypertension and more frequent disturbances of carbohydrate metabolism. After a 3-month psychophysiologic therapy 80% of the patients exhibited normotonic or borderline values in self-measurements of the blood pressure and at first a medicamentous treatment could not be continued. Follow-up examinations for testing the long-term effect of the two methods are necessary.