HOW TO LOWER YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE NATURALLY

Part 16 : Exercise

Taking exercise is one of the best things you can do to help lower your high blood pressure. With exercise alone you can reduce both your diastolic and systolic blood pressure by about 10  - as much as many medicines – as well as improve many other aspects of your circulatory system.

Why is exercise so good when you have high blood pressure?

• it helps you lose weight – every step you take and every move you make uses calories and helps burn body fat. And if you include strengthening exercise you also build muscle tissue which burns calories even at rest. We have seen in an earlier part of this series how important it is for your blood pressure to lose weight if you are overweight or obese.
• it improves the strength of your heart, lowering your resting heart rate and reducing the workload of the heart. An active person's heart can pump the same amount of blood in 50 beats that an inactive persons heart can do in 70. It may not sound like much but that means the inactive person's heart has to pump 15,000 times more each day or over half a million times more each year.
• it improves your circulation, flushing out your arteries and keeping them clear
• it reduces blood-clotting tendencies – exercise has been shown to reduce blood stickiness by 40%
• it improves beneficial HDL blood cholesterol (although it has no effect on harmful LDL-cholesterol) and this has a positive impact on the health of your arteries.

Due to all the benefits of exercise, people with high blood pressure who are active and fit have lower death rates than those who are sedentary and unfit.

And you are never too old to begin. Even if you don't start exercising until late in life you can get the benefits of it. It doesn't take years to make a difference either. Benefits can be experienced in as little as three to four weeks and will continue as long as you keep it up.

You don't have to join a gym or take up running or sport if you hate the idea of that. Exercise just means physical activity. You can fit it in by being more active in the normal course of your day and get your exercise in any way you choose with the exception of a few activities which should be avoided when you have high blood pressure.

In particular, you should avoid intense isometrics and weight lifting and also sports involving intense short bursts of activity such as boxing or squash which can suddenly raise your blood pressure. And if you have a notion to try out anything which involves changes in air pressure such as scuba diving, mountaineering or parachuting (not to mention the potential of raising your blood pressure through the roof due to the fear factor involved) you are better off getting individual advice from experts on these and any other of the less usual sports.

We will look more at beginning effective exercise to help lower your high blood pressure in the next part of the series. Meanwhile if you would like to try exercise check with your doctor before you begin as you may need to adapt your program depending on the level of hypertension and take into consideration any other health issues you have.

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