Inspiratory Muscle Training to Reduce Blood Pressure: Interim Results (No Effect so Far)

This post is an update on my experiment testing whether inspiratory muscle training reduces my blood pressure. Below is an interim analysis of the first 3 weeks of the 6 week, pre-registered experiment. So far, I’m seeing a large improvement in inspiratory muscle strength, but no effect on blood pressure. Not looking good, but hopefully I’ll start seeing an effect on blood pressure in the next few weeks.

Summary

• Measurement Precision:
  • The Aerofit shows sufficient precision for measuring inspiratory volume and maximum inspiratory & expiratory pressure (see Table below), with a standard deviation < the week-to-week improvement.
• Strength Improvement:
  • I was able to significantly increase the resistance setting on the PowerBreath. In week 1, I couldn’t complete the full set of breaths at setting 5. By week 3, I could do so for setting 6.25.
  • This correlated with a large increase maximum inspiratory & expiratory pressure, but a reduction in inspiratory volume.
    • Maximum inspiratory pressure: 81 -> 146 mmH2O
    • Maximum expiratory pressure: 87 -> 142 mmH2O
    • Maximum inspiratory volume: 5.2 -> 4.0 L
• Blood Pressure:
  • Despite the large improvement in inspiratory muscle strength, I’ve seen a no improvement in my blood pressure in the first 3 weeks. In fact, it’s gotten slightly worse (see graph).
    • Systolic: 130 -> 132 mmHg
    • Diastolic: 80 -> 84 mmHg
• Conclusions & Next Steps:
  • The experiment was pre-registered for 6 weeks, so I will complete the remaining 3 weeks and a full analysis of the results.

– QD

Methods

Pre-registration

Here.

Differences from original pre-registration:

• I increased the PowerBreath setting by 1 unit per day until I was unable to maintain full pressure for all 5 sets. After that, I followed the pre-registered protocol of increasing by 0.25 when I was able to complete all 5 sets without struggle.
  • Reason: the lowest settings were way too easy and I wanted to get to a setting that would be a challenge more quickly.
• AeroFit measurements frequency varies from the planned frequency of every 3 days.
  • Reason: I sometimes forgot.

Blinding

This experiment was not blinded

Procedure

• Once per day, I did 5 sets of 6 breaths, with 1 min. rest in-between sets using the PowerBreathe HR.
• If I struggled to complete all sets, I left the load setting as-is. If not, I increased by 0.25 turns of the load setting knob.
• Every 3-5 days, I measured my maximum inspiratory pressure, expiratory pressure, and inspiratory volume using an Aerofit Pro.
• Each morning at ~6am, I measured my blood pressure and pulse using an Omron Evolve

Measurements

• Blood Pressure
  • Instrument: Omron Evolve blood pressure meter
  • Method:
    • For each measurement, I placed the meter on my left arm, ~4 cm above my elbow.
    • Measurements were taken seated, with my feet on the ground and arms resting on a flat surface at a comfortable height (same every time).
    • 5 measurements were taken with no pause in-between measurements (other than to write down the result) and the average of the 5 measurements was used.
• Breathing:
  • Instrument: AeroFit Pro
  • Method:
    • Following the instruction in the AeroFit app
    • 3 measurements were taken with no pause in-between measurements (other than to write down the result) and the average of the 3 measurements was used.

Data Visualization

Data was visualized using Tableau.

Data

Link

---

Get new posts by email or rss feed