Progressive Muscle Relaxation and Slow Deep Breathing on Reducing Blood Pressure in Elderly People with Hypertension

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) states that as many as 972 million people or 26.4% of the world's population suffer from hypertension. Complications of hypertension cause heart disease, stroke and kidney disease. One non-pharmacological therapy is progressive muscle relaxation and slow deep breathing. This research design uses a pre-experimental one group pre-test post-test design. Sampling in this study used a purposive sampling technique of 45 respondents. The results of analysis using the paired t-test showed that systolic and diastolic blood pressure showed a significant decrease before and after the combined intervention of progressive muscle relaxation and slow deep breathing where the p-value before the therapy was given = 0.000 and the p-value after the intervention was given = 0.000 (α <0.05). There is an influence between the combination of progressive muscle relaxation and slow deep breathing on reducing blood pressure in hypertensive sufferers.