Lower blood pressure with just five minutes of extra activity a day

Finding time to exercise each day is a challenge for many people, but a new study of nearly 15,000 men and women found that adding as little as five minutes of activity to get your heart rate up is enough to lower blood pressure.

An international team of researchers led by the University of Sydney (USyd) and University College London (UCL) found that some movement, such as taking the stairs, cycling or jogging – even for just five minutes – every day could could help reduce both systolic blood pressure (SBP) by around 0.68 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) by some 0.54 mm Hg.

SBP, the the top number on a BP reading, relates to the pressure experienced by the arteries while the heart beats, while DBP, the bottom number, refers to the amount of pressure in the arteries between beats.

“High blood pressure is one of the biggest health issues globally, but unlike some major causes of cardiovascular mortality there may be relatively accessible ways to tackle the problem in addition to medication," said the study's joint senior author Emmanuel Stamatakis a professor at USyd and the director of the ProPASS (Prospective Physical Activity, Sitting and Sleep) Consortium. “The finding that doing as little as five extra minutes of exercise per day could be associated with measurably lower blood pressure readings emphasises how powerful short bouts of higher intensity movement could be for blood pressure management.”

Hypertension impacts around 1.28 billion adults around the globe and is a key factor in stroke, heart attack and heart failure. And while diet and lifestyle interventions are important in managing elevated blood pressure, as well as medication, exercise can be difficult for many reasons – including time constraints and fitness levels.

In the study, 14,761 people from five countries were tasked with wearing a thigh accelerometer device to measure their activity and blood pressure throughout the day and night. Day activities were grouped into six categories – sleep, sedentary behavior (sitting), slow walking, fast walking, standing and more intense exercise (such as running, cycling, stair climbing).

From the data gathered, the team looked at how swapping out one of these six behaviors for another could measurably impact blood pressure. While they found that, not surprisingly, replacing sedentary behavior with more vigorous exercise had the biggest benefits, it was the period spent doing so that delivered the surprises.

While clinically significant blood pressure change came about from 20-27 minutes of additional exercise – about 2 mm Hg for SBP and 1 mm Hg for DBP – just five minutes per day was enough to shift the dial.

“Our findings suggest that, for most people, exercise is key to reducing blood pressure, rather than less strenuous forms of movement such as walking," said first author Dr Jo Blodgett from the Division of Surgery and Interventional Science at UCL. “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 running for a bus or a short cycling errand, many of which can be integrated into daily routines.

“For those who don’t do a lot of exercise, walking did still have some positive benefits for blood pressure," she added. But if you want to change your blood pressure, putting more demand on the cardiovascular system through exercise will have the greatest effect.”

As these findings hint at, sedentary behavior was adversely associated with SBP and DBP, however, walking and standing didn't make things worse – or, ultimately, much better. However, if you were to spend five minutes walking up a hill, that would be enough to get the heart rate up and potentially reap the benefits of more 'vigorous' exercise.

In the six categories the researchers based their modeling on, sleep was also shown to have a positive impact on blood pressure, suggesting that a bit of extra shut-eye is more valuable for your heart health than sitting on the couch in front of the television.

"However, a substantial amount of time reallocated from sedentary behavior to sleep (eg, two hours and 50 minutes for SBP, one hour and 46 minutes for DBP) was required to yield clinically meaningful reductions in BP," the researchers noted in the study. "Our findings reinforce that in free-living environments, more time spent in exercise-like activities has the strongest association with BP, and even small changes to daily movement patterns can elicit clinically meaningful improvements."

Of course, consult your doctor before switching up your daily routine, or to find some heart-rate-elevating alternatives if activities such as cycling, hiking or stair-climbing are not an option.

The study was published in the journal Circulation.

Source: The University of Sydney