3536: Three Easy Exercises to Lower Blood Pressure Immediately by DIYActive on Active Living

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[00:01:00] This is Optimal Health Daily. Three easy exercises to lower blood pressure immediately by DIYActive of DIYActive.com. And I'm Dr. Neal Malik, your very own personal narrator. I read to you from some of the best health and fitness blogs on the web. And always with my commentary at the end. And with that, let's get right to today's post as we optimize your life.

[00:01:28] Three easy exercises to lower blood pressure immediately by DIYActive of DIYActive.com. Many exercise to pursue unique performance goals like preparing for a marathon or setting a personal best in the squat. But routine exercise is also one of the best methods to improve overall health parameters like decreasing your blood glucose levels, increasing your bone density, and especially regulating your blood pressure.

[00:01:57] High blood pressure or hypertension is a disease that develops when the blood in your arteries is consistently pumping at very high pressure, resulting in your heart and blood vessels working overtime with every pump. For adults, a normal blood pressure level is considered to be less than 120 over 80 millimeters of mercury. This is systolic over diastolic pressure.

[00:02:25] Consistent readings above this level are cause for concern. With many leading increasingly sedentary lifestyles, high blood pressure is becoming an increasingly common disease. Some estimates suggest that as much as half of the adult American population has high blood pressure. To make matters worse, only a fraction of that population knows that they have the disease. Outside of routine physicals at the doctor's office, many people often go years without getting their blood pressure tested.

[00:02:54] High blood pressure also rarely presents with obvious symptoms until it's already caused other serious health problems. Taken together, these factors have earned high blood pressure the nickname, the silent killer. If left unchecked, high blood pressure can lead to a number of debilitating conditions, such as heart attack, stroke, heart failure, kidney failure, and even vision loss. Considering the dangers, utilizing these three easy exercises to lower blood pressure

[00:03:23] can be seen as an insurance policy on your overall health. Why does exercise lower blood pressure? Before we get to the exercises themselves, you might be asking, how can exercise lower blood pressure in the first place? The first reason is very straightforward. Your heart is a muscle. And the more you train a muscle, the more resilient it becomes to stressors. Regardless of the exercise we choose to do,

[00:03:50] we create an increased demand for oxygen and nutrition to be delivered to the muscles being trained at the time. Your heart is responsible for delivering those to your working muscles via your circulatory system. When you exercise consistently, you're training your heart to pump stronger and more efficiently, which directly reduces blood pressure by taking stress off your circulatory system. Even a single bout of aerobic exercise can acutely improve your blood pressure.

[00:04:19] The second reason is indirect. Regular exercise contributes to fat loss, which is strongly correlated with a reduction in blood pressure. Depending on the type of training you do, you can drastically increase your metabolic rate over time, which will greatly benefit your body composition by allowing you to lose fat. Exercise also alleviates stress and can help reduce emotional distress, which can go a long way in maintaining your blood pressure levels in a normal range.

[00:04:47] Now that we know how exercise works its magic, what are three easy exercises to lower blood pressure? One, walk it out. Physical exercise doesn't necessarily have to be intense all the time. In fact, a recent large-scale review concluded that walking at a moderate intensity for an average of about 150 minutes per week reduced systolic blood pressure by about 4 millimeters of mercury across all age groups.

[00:05:16] Since the review was a meta-analysis or a study of studies, there was no single prescription for what moderate intensity was. However, it's safe to assume that walking at a brisk pace, roughly 4.5 miles per hour, should do the trick, so long as it's an effortful pace and creates a noticeable increase in heart rate. Two, ride the tide. Swimming is an easy exercise to lower blood pressure because it's a joint-friendly alternative to land-based exercise.

[00:05:45] The impact on your joints and connective tissues is far less underwater than it is when you're subjected to the full force of gravity. Many different populations, such as the elderly, people with injuries, or those with obesity, may find swimming or water-based cardio to be more palatable. Luckily, swimming has also been shown to have a significant impact on your blood pressure. A 10-week swimming program reduced resting heart rate by about 10 beats per minute

[00:06:13] and systolic blood pressure by an average of 6 millimeters of mercury in a group of participants who were already hypertensive. The reduction in resting heart rate was a sign of increased cardiac efficiency, and it's interesting to note that these benefits to blood pressure were seen without any significant reduction in body mass for the test subjects. This means that swimming on its own contributed directly to a reduction in blood pressure.

[00:06:41] It stands to reason that a swimming program in conjunction with a diet targeted for weight loss would create an additive positive effect on blood pressure. And three, pump some iron. Weight training isn't a single exercise, so bear with me on this one. But it would be a mistake to overlook a well-constructed weight training routine as a viable tool to decrease your blood pressure. As a recent American College of Sports Medicine report stated,

[00:07:10] resistance training is medicine. It confers similar cardiovascular and mental health benefits as endurance or aerobic exercise, but also has many unique advantages that can't be found with other training methods. For example, resistance training is a powerful tool to stop age-related sarcopenia, bone loss, has unique and chronic benefits on your metabolism, and can help correct symptoms of diabetes.

[00:07:36] As we've learned, fat mass is strongly correlated with blood pressure. The more fat you have, the higher your blood pressure. Gaining and maintaining muscle mass via resistance training will allow your metabolism to operate at a much higher rate, which will go a long way in staving off undesirable weight gain and keeping high blood pressure at bay. So, when it comes to finding easy exercises to lower blood pressure, don't discount spending some quality time in the squat rack.

[00:08:09] You just listened to the post titled, Three Easy Exercises to Lower Blood Pressure Immediately by DIY Active of DIYActive.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. Now, it's just me and a small team behind this show, so I get how much the right hire matters. When you need the right person, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Stop struggling to get your job post even seen on other sites. Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed

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[00:09:35] How many scratchers did you hit to get that? I hit a button on Carvana.com once. Okay, that's fair. It's like the lottery, except you always win. Not like the lottery at all, actually. Exactly. Inexplicably good. Offers worth bragging about. So, sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. Dr. Neal Malik here for my commentary. Today's author, DIY Active, mentioned that high-intensity training is not necessary to lower blood pressure significantly.

[00:10:04] Instead, things like walking at a moderate pace can help lower blood pressure just so long as we do it regularly. Now, it was mentioned that about 4.5 miles per hour is considered a brisk pace for most individuals. But as you know, 4.5 miles per hour may feel like a really fast pace for others. And others still may find it's not fast enough. So, here's the trick to know whether you're moving at the right pace for you. You don't need to go out and buy a heart rate monitor.

[00:10:32] And this tactic works wherever you are and with any exercise you do. Whether you're performing cardio, strength training, yoga, it doesn't matter. The trick is called the talk test. If you want to know whether you're, say, walking at a brisk pace for you, ask yourself, could I sing a song right now? If you could break out into song while you're working out, you're working at a light intensity.

[00:10:57] If, on the other hand, you ask yourself, I can't sing, but could I have a conversation with someone right now? If you answered yes to this one, you're working at a moderate intensity. If you find that there's no possible way you could have a conversation, like, you would have to stop your workout, rest, then try and have a conversation, that means you're working out at a high intensity. So, the talk test is all about whether you could talk to someone while you're working out.

[00:11:26] If you can, but aren't able to sing, you're working at a moderate pace. Alright, that'll do it for the Monday episode. I hope you're having a great week so far, and I'll be back tomorrow as usual, where your optimal life awaits.