Exercise lowers blood pressure!
Can you “get off” your high blood pressure with an investment of just two hours a week? Read the results of this exciting new study…
HYPERTENSION. If your numbers aren’t at 140/90 or below, you’ve got it. What do you get with that? A vastly increased risk of stroke (high blood pressure is the No. 1 cause of that disabling condition) and heart disease.
The good news is that many studies have shown that a combination of exercise, stress reduction, and a change in eating habits can reduce that pressure better than those drugs.
Now there is even better news. A groundbreaking new study offers conclusive evidence that simply engaging in a regular exercise program can lower your numbers enough to make those medications unnecessary.
Do you have 2 hours a week?
That’s all it took. The researchers started with 27 overweight, out-of-shape men with mild hypertension, weaned them off their blood pressure medications and divided them into two groups.
One group did the real deal: half an hour of “brisk walking,” jogging and/or stationary biking four times a week at 65 to 80 percent of their maximum heart rate.
The men in the other group did a mock exercise. They did “slow calisthenics and stretching” for the same amount of time, but their heart rates stayed below 60 percent of maximum.
Heart rates were carefully monitored in both groups of men so the researchers could be sure those doing the real exercise kept theirs above 65 percent and those doing the fake training stayed below 60 percent. . (If they went outside of those ranges, an alarm sounded!) This “exercise intensity test” makes this study quite unique.
And the results?
At the end of the 6 weeks, you could see a significant difference in the two groups. The men who did the actual exercise had lowered their diastolic (bottom) reading by an average of more than 6 points.
At the end of 10 weeks, he was down almost 10 points; from an average of 94.8 to an average of 85.2. Those who did the fake workout saw his diastolic reading rise from 93.7 to 94.4.
Systolic, the top reading, dropped 6 points in actual users from an average of 136.6 to 130.2. In fake athletes, it rose from 134.9 to 135.8.
Or, as the researchers put it, 9 out of 10 men in the real exercise group got their diastolic reading below the magical 90. All of the men who did the fake exercises were 90 or higher.
As the researchers explain, previous studies on the effects of exercise on blood pressure have yielded all sorts of results. But this one has several edges.
The researchers monitored the men’s exercise levels like never before and insisted that they make no changes to their diet. They kept the weight and fat levels the same in both groups. Why? Because some people had felt that such “confounding variables” as diet and weight loss were the cause of any drop in BP in previous studies, rather than exercise itself.
The researchers may also be the first in medical history to include a placebo exercise group for comparison.
The result is powerful evidence that many men can literally “lower” their high blood pressure with an investment of two hours a week of exercise.