How to lower blood pressure with exercise
Have you ever wondered why doctors tell you to exercise to lower your blood pressure?
In this post, you will learn why exercise can help you lower your blood pressure and why it is crucial that you add it as part of your treatment. Always of course, with the green light from your doctor. In addition, you will also find an exercise program for you to do at home or wherever you like so you can lower your blood pressure too.
Why exercise, why does it help?
First of all, we need to understand what hypertension is to understand why exercise works. There are two major things that determine your blood pressure: your heart and your blood vessels. In simple terms, the harder your heart pumps blood, the higher the pressure. And as for the blood vessels, if you push a mouthful of water through a straw, the water will be thrown farther than if you push it through a hose. With blood vessels, something similar happens, our blood vessels are elastic; when they dilate properly and turn into a hose, blood pressure gets controlled. But when they become stiff and don’t dilate properly, they become a “straw”.
Okay, understood, but what does this have to do with exercise? Well, it has everything to do with exercise. When suffering from hypertension, most likely you will be experiencing both causes at the same time: stiffness in your blood vessels and a heart that pumps too hard. During exercise, our body adapts to be able to provide the energy and oxygen needed to fuel our muscles. One of these processes is the widening of blood vessels. To be able to carry higher volumes of blood, our body widens our blood vessels through a natural process. This is maintained after exercising for several hours and even days. And because of this widening, your blood vessels have gone from straws to hoses, at least for a while. This means that while the widening lasts, your blood pressure will be lower, and this process is called Post-Exercise Hypotension (PEH) (Aly & Yeung, 2023).
What exercises caused the biggest drop in blood pressure?
This is where research gets incredibly useful to build a workout plan for you. Because depending on the type of exercise, PEH will be triggered to different degrees.
Aerobic exercise, the kind that usually puts your heart to work, seems to be one of the best types of exercise to trigger PEH, especially when training at a moderate intensity for 30 to 60 minutes 3 to 5 days per week. Brisk walking, running, jogging, stairmaster, swimming & cycling are the most studied ones (Aly & Yeung, 2023; Carpes et al., 2022; Trindade et al., 2022).
Combining aerobic exercise with resistance training seems to be one of the best fits for those who have other associated heart conditions. It seems to trigger heart function in a gentler way and still performs incredibly well at triggering PEH.
Lastly, sprint interval training (SIT) and high intensity intervallic training (HIIT) have also been shown to trigger PEH. The same goes for Isometric exercises. But a word of caution on these. Both SIT and HIIT raise blood pressure significantly while working out, which can be dangerous for some people who have extremely high levels of blood pressure. The same goes for Isometric exercises while they don’t raise blood pressure as much as SIT or HIIT, some people tend to hold their breath (apnoea) while performing some exercises. For example, with wall sits or planks. This can raise your blood pressure up and can also reach dangerous levels. If doing isometric exercises, make sure to keep a steady breathing throughout the set.
How to help someone with Hypertension?
First of all, send them to see a doctor. If it is you who is managing hypertension, please go see a doctor before starting any training. It is crucial that you do this first. People with readings above 150/100 are in danger of suffering major health issues. It may be scary to face a new medication and its side effects, but sometimes it is necessary. Then, once your blood pressure stabilises, you can start to work your way around the medication with exercise. I’ve had several clients for whom the doctor ended up dropping their medication because they managed to regulate their blood pressure naturally.
Now, once a doctor has given the green light to exercise, then it is time to put this into practice. As a starter, I’d recommend you visit this page on my website, where I personally made a FREE 3-day program that targets lowering blood pressure. And if you feel that you may need something more personalised, don’t hesitate to book a free 15-minute consultation with me or drop a message on WhatsApp.
Bibliography
Aly, K., & Yeung, P. K. (2023). Post-Exercise Hypotension: An Alternative Management Strategy for Hypertension and Cardiovascular Disease? Journal of Clinical Medicine, 12(13), 4456. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/12/13/4456
Trindade, C. O., Oliveira, E. C., Coelho, D. B., Casonatto, J., & Becker, L. K. (2022). Effects of Aquatic Exercise in Post-exercise Hypotension: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Frontiers in Physiology, 13, 834812. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2022.834812/full
Carpes, L. O., Domingues, L. B., Bertoletti, O., Fuchs, S. C., & Ferrari, R. (2022). Inter-individual responses of post-exercise hypotension in older adults with hypertension: An exploratory analysis of different exercise modalities. Frontiers in Physiology, 13, 1050609. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2022.1050609/full
