An extra five minutes of exercise per day could help to lower blood pressure

Medical Xpress / University College London / Circulation ^ | Nov. 7, 2024 | Joanna M. Blodgett et al

[ConservativeMind]

Adding small amounts of exercise into daily routine, such as climbing stairs or cycling errands, could help to reduce blood pressure, with just five additional minutes a day estimated to yield improvements, finds a new study.

The study analyzed health data from 14,761 volunteers who wore activity trackers to explore the relationship between daily movement and blood pressure.

—The researchers split daily activity into six behaviors:

—Sleep

—Sedentary behavior (such as sitting)

—Slow walking (cadence less than 100 steps per minute)

—Fast walking (cadence above 100 steps per minute)

—Standing

—More vigorous exercise (such as running, cycling or stair climbing).

They then used this data to estimate the impact of replacing one type of activity with another. They found that replacing any less active behavior with five minutes of exercise could lower systolic blood pressure (SBP) by 0.68 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) by 0.54mmHg.

At a population level, a 2mmHg reduction in SBP and a 1mmHg reduction in DPB is equivalent to an approximately 10% reduction in cardiovascular disease risk.

The study estimated that these "clinically meaningful" improvements could be achieved with as little as 20 additional minutes of exercise per day for SBP and 10 additional minutes of exercise per day for DBP.

The findings emphasize that even everyday activities that raise heart rate, such as cycling, climbing stairs or short bursts of running, can have benefits for healthy blood pressure.

"The good news is that whatever 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.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Can you put extra exercise "in the bank"? In 2024 to-date, I've gone on 112 hikes, hiked 300 miles, total duration 162 hours, climbed 39,439 vertical feet, and burned 90,500 calories (according to the trackers). Here are a few photos from my exercise hikes in Canada, Washington, Idaho, and California:

[NEMDF]

Nicely done!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Thank you! I really enjoy the outdoors as you can tell. Plus retirement gives me so many more opportunities to be outside.

[RoosterRedux]

Try adding exercise to it. Start slowly and steadily increase the intensity over time.

I have a friend who walks but only recently started walking hills. By shifting to hills (stairs would do the same thing), she has seen great improvement in her overall fitness and lowered BP.

[SisterK]

beautiful

[cantfindagoodscreenname]

I’m not sure I understand you. Are you saying I should add exercise to the biking that I’m already doing?

[cantfindagoodscreenname]

That’s awesome! I hate exercise as well. Even though biking does help with my blood pressure, it actually doesn’t provide the motivation I need to keep it up. The reason I keep it up is that I feel unbelievably amazing for the whole rest of the day when I do it in the morning. I feel like I’m floating on a cloud. I’m extremely relaxed. I don’t think I could keep this up if I didn’t get that feeling from it.

I like your solution! That’s awesome!

[RoosterRedux]

Nope. Sorry, I had forgotten about your biking. I should have look upthread and refreshed my memory before commenting.

If you are already doing high-intensity and endurance workouts, that should certainly be enough.

[cantfindagoodscreenname]

Thanks for clarifying. I hate exercise. I don’t want to do any more if I don’t have to, lol!