Maintaining healthy blood pressure can be achieved with just 5 minutes of exercise a day.

 

[Medical Today = Reporter Choi Jae-baek]

 

Studies have shown that exercise, such as running or cycling, can help lower blood pressure.

 

A study published in Circulation found that doing exercise, such as running or cycling, for more than five minutes a day can help lower both systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

 

High blood pressure not only increases the risk of serious illnesses, including heart disease and stroke, but can also lead to death, so efforts are ongoing to find the most scientific way to lower high blood pressure.

The research team explained that exercises such as running, cycling, and climbing stairs help lower blood pressure, and when 21 minutes of sitting time was replaced with exercise, systolic blood pressure was reduced by about 2 mmHg.

Accordingly, the research team stated that exercise not only has a great impact on blood pressure but is also an important factor in promoting cardiovascular health, and that through this study, they aimed to determine what patterns systolic and diastolic blood pressure show according to activity patterns over a 24-hour day.

They collected information on 14,761 participants from six observational cohort studies.

Participants wore wearable devices that measured their movements for more than 20 hours a day for at least a week, and their activity levels were tracked. Researchers recorded the participants' activities into six categories: sleeping, sitting, standing, walking slowly, and walking quickly.

Participants exercised vigorously for an average of 16 minutes per day, sat for an average of more than 10 hours per day, and had an average blood pressure of approximately 132/79 mmHg, with approximately 25% of all participants taking antihypertensive medication.

In all cohorts, covariates such as drinking history, smoking history, and age were considered, and in some cohorts, additional covariates such as physical mobility and education level were considered.

 

 

According to the analysis results, the research team reported that the more participants exercised and slept, the lower their systolic and diastolic blood pressure was, and the more participants sat, the higher their systolic and diastolic blood pressure was.

Additionally, they added that when assuming that different activities were alternated for the same amount of time, increasing the exercise time was most helpful in reducing blood pressure.

For example, researchers found that for every five minutes of exercise that replaced non-exercise activity, systolic and diastolic blood pressure decreased by 0.68 and 0.54, respectively.

The blood pressure-lowering effect was stronger as exercise intensity increased. For example, replacing 21 minutes of sitting with vigorous exercise resulted in a 2-minute decrease in systolic blood pressure, while replacing 11 minutes of sitting with vigorous exercise resulted in a 1-minute decrease in diastolic blood pressure.

 

 

Conversely, it was estimated that replacing sedentary time with low-intensity exercise, such as walking, would take 95 minutes to lower diastolic blood pressure by 1.

Experts say it's encouraging that just a few minutes of exercise can have a significant impact on blood pressure, and they reiterate the importance of adding regular exercise to your daily routine.

They explained that exercise can improve the performance and efficiency of human organs and tissues, thereby improving blood pressure management. They also added that increasing exercise intensity can rapidly bring about physiological changes beneficial to heart health.

 

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Among the diseases that you need to be careful of when the weather gets cold,

I have high blood pressure

▲ Running or cycling for more than 5 minutes a day

If you do the same exercise, you will have systolic and

It is said to help lower diastolic blood pressure.