Virtual green spaces and classical music reduce blood pressure in hospital

Gazing at a flowing river while listening to classical music could lower the blood pressure of people in the emergency room. Luckily, as these landscapes and live orchestras are hard to come by in hospitals, virtual reality and playlists do the job. Dangerously high blood pressure, known as hypertensive urgency, is common among people in intensive-care settings.

Medication can prevent it from causing damage to the eyes, heart and brain. However, relaxation approaches, such as looking at aquarium scenes and listening to classical music, have also shown promise. What is the best workout to lower your blood pressure?

Now, Safa Dönmez at the University of Health Sciences in Ankara, Turkey, and his colleagues have combined these two approaches to relaxation. The team recruited 130 adults who arrived in an emergency department with hypertensive urgency. These patients are often anxious, which can make their bodies release stress hormones that tighten blood vessels and further hike up blood pressure, says Dönmez.

The researchers gave all the participants standard medication to reduce blood pressure. Half also viewed a scene of the Columbia River in Canada flowing through a forest via a VR headset while listening to a soothing playlist of classical music from the likes of Debussy, Bach and Mozart. Before treatment, the participants’ arterial pressure was about 130 to 138 mmHg, on average.

Fifteen minutes after the intervention, it had dropped by about 12mmHG among those who only took medication, compared with about 16 mmHg for those also having the VR and music experience. The results were presented at the European Emergency Medicine Congress in Paris, France. Verónica Saldaña-Ortiz at the European University in Madrid, Spain, says that seeing such results so quickly is clinically significant.

After 30 minutes, the difference had shrunk, and by 60 minutes, the blood pressure readings of the two groups were about the same. The intervention’s initial positive effect on blood pressure may be related to its impact on anxiety, says Dönmez. Anxiety fell by a greater amount in the VR/music group, according to ratings using a questionnaire called the State Anxiety Inventory.