Best IMST Blood Pressure Apps
Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training, or IMST is a proven breathing technique to lower blood pressure. What are the best apps to master IMST? Do you really need an IMST breathing device?
What is high blood pressure?
High blood pressure is a higher-than-normal force of blood against walls of blood vessel walls. It forces the heart to work harder and hence creates a risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, i.e. stroke or heart attacks. According to the guidelines of the American College of Cardiology [1], the normal blood pressure is under 120/80 mm HG.
How to lower blood pressure immediately
Here are the scientifically proven natural ways to reduce high blood pressure long term: manage weight, become physically active, eat healthy food, enjoy adequate sleep and manage stress. However, it does take time to reduce your weight or benefit from a healthy diet. What if you want to lower blood pressure quickly at home? There are also scientifically proven natural ways of doing this: slow breathing exercises, meditation to lower blood pressure, acupressure for high blood pressure, lower blood pressure music. Always talk to your doctor about integrating these exercises in your overall hypertension treatment plan.
Why breathing to lower blood pressure?
Slow breathing exercises have been known for many years to help lower high blood pressure [2]. You can try a 4–7–8 breathing or box breathing exercises to lower blood pressure yourself and observe their positive impact. Take your blood pressure reading with a blood pressure monitor before and 10 minutes after the exercise and see the results for yourself.
IMST breathing: new spin on an old approach to lowering blood pressure
A recent study published in the Journal of American Heart Association [5], demonstrates high effectiveness of Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training (IMST) to lower blood pressure. The exercises require 30 deep breaths to lower blood pressure done over 5 minutes and repeated for 6 weeks. IMST boosts vascular health, and potentially reduces your chances of developing serious cardiovascular disease. IMST is a form of training specifically created to exercise the diaphragm and other breathing muscles. Researchers used an IMST device that provides resistance when someone inhales through it.
Breathing exercise made easy
Originally developed in the 1980s for those who suffer from respiratory issues, IMST breathing exercise requires you to inhale really hard. This is why researchers used a special device that provides resistance. As we show later however, you can achieve similar positive results of lower blood pressure with resistance breathing through a pinched nose without an IMST breathing device.
The researchers [3] assembled 36 healthy volunteers between the ages of 50 and 79 with healthy blood pressure numbers. Half the group were assigned to do high-resistance IMST. The other half of the group also did IMST for 1.5 months, but were effectively given a placebo: they used low-resistance versions of the device.
Those who did the more intense form of breathing exercise had a 9-point drop in their systolic blood pressure — “a reduction which generally exceeds that achieved by walking 30 minutes a day five days a week,” say the study authors. “That decline is also equal to the effects of some blood pressure-lowering drug regimens.”
Does IMST breathing exercise to lower blood pressure without a device really work?
Our tests show that IMST breathing exercise could be performed without a device. How does it work? Just restrict airflow through your nostrils with your thumbs while inhaling. Keep your mouth closed while breathing in. Exhale freely. It should be very difficult to inhale. You should be able to take just about ¼ of the air as compared to your regular deep inhale and you should feel your diaphragm rising.
I have not conducted a formal research on this but every time I was doing this exercise over four weeks it DID result in reducing my Systolic blood pressure by 5–9 points.
Check out the video in this post which explains the technique in detail and includes a 5 Min follow along exercise.
How apps can help with IMST breathing exercise?
Once you tried IMST breathing without a device by following our YouTube video, you may consider exploring mobile apps which could deliver a similar experience off-line. Here are the main reasons why breathing apps are becoming very popular these days for users looking for a convenient way to use breathing exercises to lower blood pressure.
- Breathing apps allow to enjoy breathing exercises without connecting to internet
- Breathing exercise apps include a selection of breathing exercises to choose from, i.e. box breathing or 4–7–8 breathing
- Regular blood pressure apps, like the popular SmartBP app, allow users only to track their blood pressure numbers. Best apps offer also an opportunity to reduce stress, heart rate and blood pressure by applying relaxation techniques like slow breathing, meditation and more.
Best IMST Apps To Lower Blood Pressure
There are many manufactures which produce breathing devices which can be used for IMST breathing exercises. One of the most popular is PowerBreathe (™). This manufacturer produces breathing devices for Health, Sports and Performing Arts. Their Inspiratory Muscle Training (IMT) device is scientifically proven to reduce breathing fatigue and increase breathing stamina in a wide range of people. From patients with respiratory illness to elite athletes — anyone can benefit from these breathing exercise devices.
For some reason only a few app publishers promote IMST breathing to lower blood pressure. As of October 2022 I found only two apps on the market which include IMST breathing exercise.
Aerofit Pro (™) is one of them. It is actually a combination of a device and virtual coach app. It is positioned as a lung exercise device. It comes with many bells and whistles and as expected for this kind of complex device it comes with a quite steep price tag.
The breathing exercise offering comes with different levels of resistance that can be easily calibrated.
I hope that by now you have tried IMST breathing exercise without a device and are quite happy with the results. What happens if you would like to have a better user experience while doing this exercise? In this case you should definitely explore our BreathNow app.
BreathNow is a blood pressure app, heart risk analyser and heart rate monitor in one. It offers users not only a convenient way to log and track their blood pressure and pulse, but also offers a broad set of calming activities which help to lower anxiety, stress, pulse and high blood pressure without medications. It includes the most popular breathing exercises like 4–7–8 breathing, box breathing and of course IMST breathing without a device to lower blood pressure.
The new feature, Todays Insights, introduced in August 2022 alerts users to different heart health risks. The app pulls the data from users’ Apple Health account and checks anomalies in resting heart rate, systolic blood pressure, number of daily steps, average sleep time, low blood oxygen (based on Apple Watch inputs) and irregular heart rhythm (also based on Apple Watch inputs).
IMPORTANT: None of the blood pressure apps on the market, BreathNow included, allow you to take blood pressure readings without an external blood pressure monitor. The good news is that most modern blood pressure monitors can be connected to Apple Health via Bluetooth. In this case blood pressure readings are downloaded into your Apple Health account and then smoothly shared with BreathNow.
The other neat feature of BreathNow is that breathing exercises can be performed on Apple Watch. This is especially important in a busy environment or if you want to fall asleep faster with the help of Apple Watch. In this case the Apple Watch will guide your breathing with gentle vibration and it will fall asleep after you do.
Please try this app for free on the Apple Appstore and let me know in the comments how it worked for you.
REFERENCES
- New ACC/AHA High Blood Pressure Guidelines Lower Definition of Hypertension,
- Slow Deep Breathing Reduces High Blood Pressure In Hypertensive Patients, Researchgate.
- Time‐Efficient Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training Lowers Blood Pressure and Improves Endothelial Function, NO Bioavailability, and Oxidative Stress in Midlife/Older Adults With Above‐Normal Blood Pressure.
