To lower your blood pressure, try exercising 'like this'! Introducing a new alternative to hypertension treatment, compound exercise

Why do you need exercise for high blood pressure?

High blood pressure can cause damage to the lining of blood vessels and can lead to fatal cardiovascular diseases such as stroke, angina, and myocardial infarction. Doctors usually prescribe medications to prevent problems that high blood pressure can cause. However, most high blood pressure medications are simply blood pressure-lowering drugs that lower blood pressure levels, not a treatment for high blood pressure.

Of course, people with systolic blood pressure above 160 mmHg need to periodically administer antihypertensive medication to lower their blood pressure. However, if your systolic blood pressure is between 120 and 159 mmHg and your diastolic blood pressure is below 99 mmHg, exercise and diet may be more effective.

How exercise affects high blood pressure

When we start exercising, our body increases the heart rate and dilates the blood vessels to supply the necessary blood to the muscles. When you stop exercising, your heart rate and contraction return to your pre-workout state, but these dilated blood vessels last up to 22 hours, depending on the intensity and duration of your workout. This creates a virtuous cycle in which the heart uses less and less force to pump blood. After all, regular exercise dilates blood vessels and improves the heart's ability to contract, which can consistently lower blood pressure.

Many people with high blood pressure are reluctant to exercise for fear of a temporary increase in blood pressure. However, if your systolic blood pressure is not 180 mmHg or 110 mmHg or higher, you should not worry about a temporary increase in blood pressure due to exercise such as walking.

Exercises to lower blood pressure

The American College of Cardiology and the American College of Sports Medicine recommend that people with high blood pressure get at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise each day, if possible. Moderate-intensity aerobic exercise here means alertness (brisk walking) or jogging. Additionally, anaerobic exercise, or weight training, may be helpful.

Moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, such as walking, jogging, swimming, and mountain climbing, does not put a strain on the heart because it does not require a large amount of blood from the muscles. In particular, it is also an advantage that most aerobic exercises mainly require the muscles of the lower body, which have more than four times the distribution of blood vessels compared to the muscles of the upper body. Therefore, it is recommended that patients with high blood pressure who start exercising for the first time start with walking exercises that focus on the lower body and gradually increase the intensity. Short, frequent exercise may be as effective as or even better than doing it for 30 minutes or more at a time.

High-intensity weight training during anaerobic exercise involves 5 or more repetitions of 80% of the maximum weight you can lift at a time, while moderate-intensity weight training involves 12-15 repetitions of 50-60% of your maximum weight.

In the past, high-intensity anaerobic exercise, such as weight training or sprints, was not recommended for people with high blood pressure. However, recent studies have shown that moderate- or low-intensity weight training can lower blood pressure to a level comparable to aerobic exercise. This is because the muscle mass gained by anaerobic exercise dilates blood vessels more, effectively lowering blood pressure. It is said that it is difficult to increase this muscle mass through aerobic exercise alone. Especially in the elderly, studies have shown that aerobic exercise can hardly increase muscle mass.

Compound exercise refers to combining aerobic and anaerobic exercises together. In the past, low-intensity aerobic exercise and a few anaerobic exercises were performed one after the other without a break, but the recent emphasis on compound exercises is to perform anaerobic exercises first and then finish with aerobic exercises. For example, you might do 20 minutes of weight training, followed by 20-30 minutes of cardio.

In fact, studies at Florida State University in the United States have shown that 8 weeks of combined exercise can lower blood pressure, increase vascular elasticity, and significantly lower risk factors for other cardiovascular events in women with hypertension and menopause.