Meditation smartphone application effects on prehypertensive adults’ blood pressure: Dose-response feasibility trial.

Essential hypertension (EH) is the most common chronic disease in the United States and a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Lifestyle interventions (e.g., diet, exercise, stress management) to reduce blood pressure (BP) are often complex with varying effectiveness. Breathing awareness meditation (BAM) is a stress management strategy with encouraging effects on BP, though widespread dissemination is hampered by the lack of an easy-to-use methodology to train and monitor BAM practices. A smartphone application (Tension Tamer [TT]) that implements BAM and tracks adherence has shown promise in addressing these gaps. This 6-month dose-response feasibility trial evaluated effects of the app on BP to further optimize BAM user guidelines.