Tension Tamer: Delivering Meditation with Objective Heart Rate Acquisition for Adherence Monitoring Using a Smart Phone Platform

Overview

Journal J Altern Complement Med

Specialty Rehabilitation Medicine

Date 2012 Sep 13

PMID 22967280

Citations 10

Authors

Mathew J Gregoski

Alexey Vertegel

Aleksey Shaporev

Frank A Treiber

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Objectives: This brief report demonstrates the proof of concept of the Tension Tamer (TT) smartphone application, which integrates photoplethysmograph capabilities with breathing awareness meditation (BAM), to reduce stress and measure heart rate and adherence.

Design: Methods for objectively measuring heart rate and adherence to BAM were developed as part of a future randomized controlled trial.

Setting/location: The study was conducted at Jerry Zucker Middle School of Science and the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston.

Subjects: The subjects were three prehypertensive male teachers.

Intervention: The method used was smartphone delivered BAM.

Outcome Measures: Objective measures included heart rate, adherence, and ambulatory blood pressure (BP).

Results: Adherence data was successfully collected by the TT application. Increased adherence to TT coincided with increased improvements in ambulatory BP over a 3-month period.

Conclusions: TT shows promise as a simple inexpensive program for administering BAM and capturing adherence data in future clinical trials.

Citing Articles

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Chandler J, Christon L, Benfield K, Pairet S, Hoffman M, Treiber F Contemp Clin Trials Commun. 2023; 32:101062.

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Ethnicity Differences in Sleep Changes Among Prehypertensive Adults Using a Smartphone Meditation App: Dose-Response Trial.

Sieverdes J, Treiber F, Kline C, Mueller M, Brunner-Jackson B, Sox L JMIR Form Res. 2020; 4(10):e20501.

PMID: 33021484 PMC: 7576537. DOI: 10.2196/20501.

Increasing exposure to complementary and alternative medicine treatment options through the design of a social media tool.

Plachkinova M, Kettering V, Chatterjee S Health Syst (Basingstoke). 2019; 8(2):99-116.

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The Current State of Mobile Phone Apps for Monitoring Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability, and Atrial Fibrillation: Narrative Review.

Li K, White F, Tipoe T, Liu T, Wong M, Jesuthasan A JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2019; 7(2):e11606.

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"The Smartphone's Guide to the Galaxy": In Situ Analysis in Space.

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