It takes little: According to recent research, doing only five minutes of exercise in your daily routine can reduce blood pressure and perhaps minimize your risk of heart disease.
Reduce blood pressure
According to University College London (UCL) study lead author Jo Blodgett, “the good news is that regardless of your physical ability, it doesn’t take long to have a positive effect on blood pressure.” “What’s unique about our exercise variable is that it includes all exercise-like activities, from climbing the stairs to a short cycling errand, many of which can be integrated into daily routines.”
Her group’s results were released in the journal Circulation on November 6.
The researchers estimate that almost 1.3 billion adults worldwide suffer from high blood pressure, which is one of the leading causes of stroke and other preventable deaths.
Reduce blood pressure
Nearly 15,000 adult volunteers participated in the new study, and they were provided activity trackers to record their daily participation in six important activities:
- Sleep
- Sedentary behavior (such as sitting)
- Slow walking (less than 100 steps per minute)
- Fast walking (100 steps per minute or more)
- Standing
- More vigorous exercise (such as running, cycling or stair climbing)
According to the statistics, the typical participant slept for seven hours every day, engaged in sedentary activities like sitting for ten hours, stood for three hours, walked slowly and quickly for one hour, and only engaged in 16 minutes of exercise, such as cycling and jogging.
The researchers used those figures to determine the effect on blood pressure of substituting even five minutes of exercise for a less energetic behavior.
The British team reported a healthy decrease in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) of 0.54 mmHg2 and systolic blood pressure (the top number in a reading) of 0.68 mmHg.
Reduce blood pressure
According to the researchers, a somewhat larger drop in blood pressure, 2 mmHg in the systolic and 1 mmHg in the diastolic, might reduce a person’s risk of heart disease by 10%. According to them, that may be achieved by incorporating 10 to 20 minutes of exercise each day into a daily regimen.
The researchers found that anything that increases heart rate, such as cycling, stair climbing, or brief sprints, can lower high blood pressure.
Blodgett, a senior research fellow in the Institute of Sport, Exercise, and Health at UCL, stated, “Our findings suggest that, for most people, exercise is key to reducing blood pressure, rather than less strenuous forms of movement like walking.”
However, she emphasized that “walking did still have some positive benefits for blood pressure for those who don’t do a lot of exercise.”
Professor of medicine and health at the University of Sydney in Australia, Emmanuel Stamatakis is a senior author.
In a UCL news release, he stated, “The discovery that even five minutes more of exercise or strenuous incidental activities per day could be linked to quantifiably lower blood pressure readings highlights how effective brief bursts of higher intensity movement could be for blood pressure management.”
Reduce blood pressure
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