Simple activities reduce blood pressure

IU researchers have determined that incorporating physical activities, such as walking a dog or cleaning the house, into a daily routine can effectively lower blood pressure.\nDoctoral students Jaume Padilla and Saejong Park worked for Janet P. Wallace, IU director of adult fitness and an associate professor of kinesiology, to discover the effects of normal lifestyle physical activity on patients with hypertension, or high blood pressure, and pre-hypertension. \nWallace said it had been generally presumed by medical organizations that physical activity could help decrease hypertension, but the dots had yet to be connected.\n"The American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association had recommended physical activity for the treatment of hypertension, but there was very little evidence," Wallace said. "We wanted to provide more information."\nUntil recently, only the effects of medication, change in diet and rigorous cardiovascular exercise on blood pressure had been studied. However, Padilla and Park found that an accumulation of four hours of routine physical activity can lower blood pressure in pre-hypertensive and hypertensive patients for of six to eight hours.\n"It was unknown to that point that an accumulation of physical activity could help lower blood pressure," Padilla said. "Encouraging physical activity to people with high blood pressure will help them to reduce the amount of medication needed and lower blood pressure for the ones not on medication."\nPre-hypertensive patients have a systolic blood pressure between 120 and 139 and a diastolic blood pressure between 80 and 89. Hypertensive patients have a systolic blood pressure higher than 140 and a diastolic blood pressure higher than 90. People taking blood pressure medication are also categorized as hypertensive.\nThe researchers asked the subjects to incorporate enough physical activity into their days to burn an accumulation of 150 calories. On average, the subjects spent a total of four hours burning calories and experienced lower blood pressure for six to eight hours. They chose everyday activities such as carrying heavy objects, cleaning the house, climbing stairs, gardening, bicycling, mowing the lawn and brisk walking.\n"I think physical activity is easier to adapt to daily life than exercise," Park said.\nThe subjects were divided according to their blood pressures and placed into three groups: normal tensive, pre-hypertensive and hypertensive. Only the pre-hypertensive and hypertensive subjects experienced a decrease in blood pressure because of the physical activity. \nThe researchers used ambulatory blood pressure monitors for the study. The subjects wore blood pressure cuffs on their arms and monitors on their hips. \nTheir blood pressures were checked every 50 minutes during the day and every 30 minutes during the night.\nThe next step, Padilla said, is to test shorter sessions of activity and their effects on blood pressure. \n"Four hours of physical activity is quite a lot," Padilla said. "We are trying to see if short bouts of physical activity can have the same effect."\nThe students have already conducted the data analysis of this study, but they are still working on the manuscript.\nTo test this, Park asked subjects to walk briskly with her on a treadmill for 40 minutes on the first day. On the second day, she asked the patients to walk four times, 10 minutes each time. The data analysis concluded that the shorter, more frequent periods of activity had greater effects on blood pressure. The second study tested only pre-hypertensive patients, as it was more focused on hypertension prevention.\n"The physical activity we tested first was done over four hours," Park said. "This one's only 40 minutes. It fits better into daily life"