Just five extra minutes of exercise a day can help lower blood pressure, a study suggests.
High blood pressure affects 1.28 billion adults worldwide and is one of the leading causes of premature death. It can lead to strokes, heart attacks, heart failure, kidney damage and many other health problems, and is often described as a silent killer due to its lack of symptoms.
Experts have long known that exercise is good for the heart. But researchers from University College London and the University of Sydney wanted to see if even a little extra effort could make a difference.
In the study, they followed about 15,000 people wearing activity trackers for 24 hours to investigate the relationship between daily exercise and blood pressure. The results showed that adding just five minutes of exercise to a person’s daily routine, such as climbing stairs or cycling to the store, was enough to bring about an improvement in blood pressure.
The findings of the study, supported by the British Heart Foundation, were published in the journal Circulation. Dr. Jo Blodgett, the study’s first author, from UCL, said: “Our findings suggest that for most people, exercise is the key to lowering blood pressure, rather than less strenuous forms of exercise such as walking.
“The good news is that, regardless of your physical capabilities, it does not take long for a positive effect on blood pressure to occur. The unique thing about our exercise variable is that it includes all exercise-like activities, from climbing stairs to a short bike ride, many of which can be integrated into daily routines.”
Among the study participants who didn’t do much exercise, walking still had some positive benefits for blood pressure, Blodgett said. “But if you want to change your blood pressure, putting more pressure on the cardiovascular system through exercise will have the greatest effect.”
An additional five minutes of any exercise that increases heart rate can lower systolic blood pressure (SBP) by 0.68 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) by 0.54 mmHg.
Systolic is the top number in a blood pressure reading and represents the pressure when the heart pumps blood through the body. Diastolic is the bottom number and is the pressure when the heart rests between beats.
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At the population level, a 2 mmHg reduction in SBP and a 1 mmHg reduction in DPB corresponds to an approximately 10% reduction in heart disease risk, the researchers say.
Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, the study’s joint senior author, from the University of Sydney, said: “High blood pressure is one of the biggest health problems worldwide, but there may be relatively accessible ways to tackle the problem besides medication.
“The finding that doing just five additional minutes of exercise or vigorous incidental activity per day can be associated with measurably lower blood pressure readings highlights how powerful short bouts of higher-intensity exercise can be for controlling blood pressure.”