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Moving a little more in your daily routine would be the key to reducing your blood pressure. And it would only take a few minutes to see a difference according to a recent study. An encouraging observation.
Do you suffer from high blood pressure like 17 million French people? In addition to implementing treatment and monitoring your diet, another change could benefit you: physical activity.
5 minutes of extra activity already lowers high blood pressure
While the benefits of movement are well established, new research from the University of Sydney and University College London (UCL) suggests that adding a small amount of physical activity, such as walking uphill or climbing of stairs, to your day could already help reduce blood pressure.
The research team analyzed health data from nearly 15,000 volunteers in five countries to see how replacing one type of movement behavior with another during the day is associated with blood pressure. Each participant used a wearable accelerometer on their thigh to measure their activity and blood pressure throughout the day and night. Daily activity was divided into six categories: sleep, sedentary behavior (like sitting), slow walking, brisk walking, standing, and more vigorous exercise like running, cycling, or climbing stairs. The team immediately statistically modeled what would happen if an individual changed varying amounts of one behavior for another.
According to the results, replacing sedentary behavior with 20 to 27 minutes of exercise per day could potentially reduce cardiovascular disease by up to 28% at the population level. But even an extra 5 minutes of physical activity added to one’s day was associated with estimated reductions of -0.68 mm Hg.
The slightest addition of an activity that increases the heart rate, even by a few minutes, therefore has a positive effect on the disease.
A very accessible way to include in your daily life
The study, published in Trafficenthused its authors. Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, co-lead author and director of the ProPASS consortium at the Charles Perkins Centre, said: “High blood pressure is one of the world’s biggest health problems, but unlike some major causes of cardiovascular mortality, there are relatively accessible ways to tackle the problem beyond medication.”
Indeed, doing 5 minutes of activity (or more) per day seems a completely accessible goal.
“The finding that doing just 5 minutes of extra exercise per day could be associated with significantly lower blood pressure readings highlights the effectiveness of short bursts of more intense movement for blood pressure management.”
The good news is that regardless of your physical ability, it doesn’t take long to have a positive effect on blood pressure. “The unique thing about our exercise variable is that it includes all exercise-type activities, such as running to catch the bus or going for a short bike ride, many of which can be incorporated into the daily routine.”
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