New Research Suggests Five Minutes of Extra Exercise a Day Could Lower Blood Pressure

High blood pressure (hypertension) is one of the most common causes of premature death worldwide. And while we’re well aware that frequent exercise can help combat high blood pressure, the good news is that new evidence suggests that just 5 minutes of extra movement could make a significant difference to our heart health and even potentially reduce those risks.

The study published in Circulation analysed health data from 14,761 participants to examine how swapping one type of movement with another was associated with changes in blood pressure. During the intervention, the participants from five different countries wore an accelerometer device to measure their activity and blood pressure throughout the course of the day and night.

The participant’s daily activity was split into six categories:

• Sleep
• Sedentary behaviour (sitting)
• Slow walking
• Fast walking
• Standing
• Vigorous exercise (running, cycling or stair climbing)

The researchers measured what would happen if a participant changed various amounts of one behaviour or another in order to estimate the effect on blood pressure.

They found that replacing sedentary behaviour with 20-27 minutes of exercise per day by uphill walking, stair climbing, running and cycling, was estimated to lead to a significant reduction in blood pressure and could potentially reduce cardiovascular disease by up to 29%.

The study also indicated that just five minutes of activity a day was estimated to potentially reduce blood pressure.

According to joint senior author Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, ‘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.’

‘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,’ he explained.

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