Doing 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 known this for a long time exercise is good for the heart. But researchers at 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 around 15,000 people who wore activity trackers for 24 hours to investigate the relationship between daily movement 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 shops, was enough to bring about improvements in blood pressure.
The findings of the study, supported by the British Heart Foundation, were published in the journal Circulation. Dr Jo Blodgett, first author of the study, from UCL, said: “Our findings suggest that for most people, exercise is the key to reducing blood pressure, rather than less vigorous forms of exercise such as walking.
“The good news is that regardless of your physical ability, it doesn’t take long to have a positive effect on blood pressure. What is unique about our exercise variable is that it includes all exercise-like activities, from climbing stairs to a short cycling assignment, many of which can be integrated into daily routines.”
Among the study participants who didn’t do much exercise, walking still had positive benefits for blood pressure, Blodgett said. “But if you want to change your blood pressure, putting more on the cardiovascular system through exercise will have the biggest effect.”
An extra 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 pressure when the heart pumps blood around the body. Diastolic is the bottom number and is the pressure when the heart is resting between beats.
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At a population level, a 2mmHg reduction in SBP and a 1mmHg reduction in DBP is equivalent to an approximately 10% reduction in the risk of heart disease, say the researchers.
Prof Emmanuel Stamatakis, the co-senior author of the study, from the University of Sydney, said: “High blood pressure is one of the biggest health issues worldwide, but there may be relatively accessible ways to tackle the problem in addition to medication.
“The finding that doing as little as five extra minutes of exercise or vigorous casual activity per day can be associated with measurably lower blood pressure readings highlights how powerful short bouts of higher intensity movement can be for blood pressure management.”
