The Effects of Chu-ma Therapy on Decreasing Blood Pressure in Essential Hypertension

Kim, Nam Sun

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of Chu-ma therapy and to suggest that the therapy is an effective nursing intervention tool to reduce blood pressure. The research design employed was the non-synchronized research method with non- equivalent control group. A total of 30 people with essential hypertension, who were from forty to sixty five years old, participated in the study. The Chu-ma therapy was administered by every day for ten or fifteen minutes for eight weeks from 19, April to 13, June in 1999. In order to evaluate the effects of Chu-ma therapy, blood pressure of the two groups were measured once a week, and physiological parameters (epinephrine, norepinephrine, total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, triglycerides) were measured before and after the treatment. Collected data was analyzed by SAS package. The results of this study can be summarized as follows: 1) There were significant decrease in systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure in the experimental group. 2) There were no significant changes in epinephrine, norepinephrine of the two groups. 3) There were significant decrease in total cholesterol and triglycerides, and HDL- cholesterol increased significantly in the experimental group. 4) The effect of Chu-ma therapy on the measured time on the blood pressure in experimental group was as follows: Both of systolic and diastolic blood pressures were significantly decreased after 5weeks. The result proved that Chu-ma therapy is an effective nursing intervention tool for clients with essential hypertenion. However further research is still necessary to compare the effect with the different periods and number of times for Chu-ma therapy.