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Vigorous exercises that increase your heart rate — such as cycling, stair climbing or running — may be more effective at lowering blood pressure than low-intensity forms of physical exercise such as walking, according to a recent study. Circulation study. In fact, increasing your exercise time by just five minutes per day can further help lower your blood pressure.
Lead author of the study, Jo Blodgett from UCL Surgery & Interventional Science and the Institute of Sport, Exercise & Health, said in a press release: “The good news is that whatever your physical capabilities, it doesn’t take long to have a positive effect on your health. blood pressure.”
“For those who don’t exercise much, walking still had some positive benefits for blood pressure. But if you want to change your blood pressure, increasing the burden on the cardiovascular system through exercise will have the greatest effect,” Blodgett added.
The researchers studied the health data of 14,761 volunteers from five countries who wore activity tracking devices while exercising and walking. The researchers then divided their daily activities into six categories: sitting, sleeping, slow walking, fast walking, standing and vigorous exercise.
They found that improving your sleep, walking and standing time, in addition to performing vigorous exercise, can also make a meaningful contribution to lowering your blood pressure. “In addition to the benefits attributed to exercise, substantial replacement of sedentary time with standing or slow walking was required to observe any clinically meaningful change in DBP (78 min/d and 95 min/d, respectively,” noted the authors note. Longer sleep duration with lower blood pressure may be related to recovery processes that occur during sleep. For example, nocturnal dipping is a common physiological event, with a usual decrease of 10% to 20% of blood pressure. With wakefulness. Over time, chronic sleep deprivation could lead to systemic arterial hypertension due to increased cardiovascular burden, vasoconstriction, and sympathetic nervous system activity.
“The exercise-like activities modeled in our study include activities such as running, cycling or oblique walking, and could include both structured, intentional exercise and incidental daily activities such as running to a bus or climbing stairs,” the researchers added. “Despite the known benefits of exercise, participation in structured exercise sessions remains low due to poor feasibility and desire among many middle-aged adults. Implementing daily changes of five minutes of additional exercise-like activity produces realistic behavioral changes that can be easily integrated into daily habits and activities.”
About 26% of the world’s population or 972 million people suffer from high blood pressure. By 2025, the prevalence of high blood pressure could rise to 29% as more people in developing countries develop the condition. If high blood pressure goes undiagnosed and untreated, it can significantly increase the risk of stroke and heart disease.