I believe in doing everything to tackle this kind of problems, including taking BP medications, which are of many classes, and sometimes not all work, and if they work for sometime, they may stop working later on.
So a dumb reliance on them or complete abandoning of them are both not advisable. I have had 4 BP medications that did not help my High BP, and now I take a combination BP medication once in two days and rely on rest of things discussed here. Most of the time I have been to Doctor's office, the BP has come normal or below normal.
If you do slow breathing, one can bring down his or her High Blood Pressure. I have tried this with Anu Loma Viloma - Alternate Nostril Breathing.
In my experience, if you have done Kapalbhati or Diaphragmatic Breathing, then it becomes easier to control the breathing.
There are other kinds of breathing, like using Chest, which uses Inter costal Muscles, or using Collar Bones, which uses Clavical Muscles (by raising and lowering your collar bones you change the volume of the lungs and by Boyle's Law, you change the pressure inside the lungs which regulates the air intake and exhalation).
Then there are breathing techniques using Thoracic and Nasal Muscles but it is subject to one's training. Most of the people use Chest Muscles.
Think of the order mentioned as Gear 1 (Diaphragmatic), Gear 2 (Chest), Gear 3 (Collar Bones), Gear 4 (Thoracic) and Gear 5 (Nasal) of driving a manual stick shift car, with maximum power and control yielded by Gear 1.
In Anuloma Viloma, your Inhalation, Retention and Exhalation is in ratio of 1-4-2, and you take some magic number as 2, 3, or 4 for beginners and breathe in, retain and breathe out over count of 1 x 2 (3 or 4), 4 x 2 (3 or 4), 2 x 2 (3 or 4).
If you have done this over many years, like I have been doing for 10 years, there comes a stage, where you do not need to hold your hand up and use fingers to block alternate nostrils. One develops the control to voluntarily shut any nostril. This helps if you want to do this in public places or meetings, and do not want to be noticed.
The principle is that the NO, Nitric Oxide, acts as a Neuro Transmitter as well as Vascular Dilation mechanism. In simple terms, it helps carry signalling between different parts of the body and the brain, as well as dilate the "tensed" walls of the blood vessels, which helps reduce the High Blood Pressure.
It seems, if one reduces and regulates the Oxygen intake, by slowly intaking O2 and slowly exhaling CO2, there is a rise in NO in the system.
The only issue is to bring it into practice. Res-pirate works on the same principle.
Walking and Slow Exercising also brings down High Blood Pressure. Loosing Weight, getting rid of Salt in your diet also goes a long way.
Please do not worry about not getting Salt, as modern life style and foods, invariably would give you supply of Salt. From your side, you need to decide, what is more important: Your Life and Health or Your Taste Buds?
In Yoga, there is a theory, which says that the more you take less breath, the longer your live. It applies to the Heart Beats as well, and the both facts were recently scientifically validated.
It makes sense if one takes Body as a Rechargeable Battery whose cycles need to be kept stress free and cycles of charging and discharging kept to minimum.
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