When it comes to our health, many of us are always looking for ways to lower blood pressure.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 75 million American adults have high blood pressure – that’s one-third of the adult population!
Hypertension can lead to heart disease, stroke, and other serious health complications, so it’s important for all of us to do what we can to keep our blood pressure within a healthy range.
Surprisingly, exercise may be one of the best weapons against hypertension.
In this blog post, we take a look at some recent studies on the topic and explore how exercise can help lower blood pressure.
How Exercise Can Help Lower Blood Pressure
Research on the impact of exercise on blood pressure dates back to the early 20th century.
Back in 1924, researchers found that healthy young male athletes had lower resting heart rates and blood pressure than normal men of similar age.
This finding sparked interest in the topic, leading to more studies examining how physical activity affects our health.
In a more recent study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers looked at data from over 1.3 million people and found that those with higher levels of physical activity were less likely to be diagnosed with hypertension compared to those who led a sedentary lifestyle.
This is far from the only study demonstrating the link between exercise and lower blood pressure.
In fact, a 2011 review of more than 30 studies found that not only does physical activity help lower blood pressure, but it also appears to be an effective treatment for people with hypertension.
The benefits of exercise for lowering blood pressure remain even after we account for other factors that could potentially influence the relationship between exercise and hypertension.
For example, some studies have suggested that those who participate in physical activity might engage in healthier lifestyle behaviors as a result of their exercise habits.
In other words, many of us choose to be more active because we feel better as a result – it’s not just the exercise itself that offers health benefits.
However, when researchers take this into account and look at the relationship between exercise and blood pressure, they still find that physical activity significantly reduces hypertension risk.
How Exercise Lowers Blood Pressure
We know that regular exercise can help lower blood pressure; however, we’re still not entirely sure how it happens.
One theory suggests that exercise changes the body’s hormones, including aldosterone, renin, and norepinephrine.
These substances have been shown to change with physical activity levels in the blood.
Another possibility is that exercise alters vascular function through an increase in nitric oxide production.
Finally, regular exercise may help reduce stress-related blood pressure spikes by reducing the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.
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How Many Exercises Do You Need?
The short answer: more is better. While we know that physical activity can help lower blood pressure, there is still a lot we don’t know about how different types and amounts of activity affect our health.
In some studies, participants who had the greatest decreases in blood pressure were those who engaged in at least around 30 to 60 minutes of exercise per day, five days a week.
There is also evidence that resistance training can help decrease blood pressure as well as physical activity involving strength and/or endurance.
Finally, a variety of activities appears to provide similar benefits.
In fact, one study found that both low and high-intensity exercise provided more or less the same reduction in blood pressure as moderate-intensity exercise did.
So if you haven’t been very active in the past, it’s never too late to start.
You can start by incorporating some light exercise into your daily routine, such as taking short walks or working in the garden.
If you’re already physically active, increasing how much time you spend being active can help further lower your blood pressure.