Can blood pressure be lowered without taking medicine? American Heart Association study: 5 minutes of "breathing exercises" are as effective as jogging
Want to exercise but feel unable to do so, and your blood pressure has been so high recently? Don’t be discouraged, maybe simple breathing exercises can achieve the effect of the “lazy man’s blood pressure reduction method”. A new study published in the “Journal of the American Heart Association” at the end of June found that as long as you practice something called “inspiratory muscle training with resistance” (IMST), you can resist cardiovascular disease through “super time-saving” exercise. risks of.
Hypertension is known as the “silent killer”. It usually has no obvious symptoms, but it may cause a series of body function and organ problems. The Journal of the American Heart Association points out that 65% of adults over 50 in the United States have blood pressure higher than normal. Less than 40% of adults meet the recommended amount of exercise. This puts American adults at greater risk for heart disease and stroke.
A super time-saving way to reduce blood pressure for lazy people? American Heart Association study: Breathing exercises are effective
Daniel Craighead, assistant professor at the Institute of Physiology at the University of Colorado, pointed out that although everyone knows that exercise is helpful for cardiovascular health, exercise requires a lot of time and energy, and is “too expensive” for many people. Initially, high-resistance respiratory muscle strength training was given as rehabilitation training for people with dyspnea disorders, but Craighead and his team tested a more time-saving strategy - 30 high-resistance breathing exercises per day, practiced six days a week - in the hope that Confirm whether it can also achieve the effect of improving cardiovascular, cognitive, and exercise performance.
The study recruited adults between the ages of 50 and 79 over a 36-year period, with blood pressure (systolic blood pressure) above 120 mm Hg. After six weeks of continuous testing, the average blood pressure of the subjects who practiced resistance inspiratory muscle training dropped by 9 mmHg. The magnitude of this blood pressure lowering effect is equivalent to the effect achieved by walking for 30 minutes five days a week.
Practicing breathing to increase nitric oxide concentration is simpler and easier than aerobic exercise
“It seems from the experiment that practicing breathing is not only more time-consuming than traditional exercise, but the benefits seem to be longer-lasting,” Craighead said. Participants in the exercise group also saw improvements in vascular endothelium and arterial dilation, which made them The concentration of nitric oxide in blood vessels increases, and nitric oxide is a key substance that helps blood vessels relax and prevents plaque from clumping in the blood. Nitric oxide in the blood vessels of adults generally declines gradually with age.
Doug Seals, a distinguished professor at the Institute of Physiology at the University of Colorado, believes that the benefit of practicing resistance inspiratory muscle training is that the subjects’ compliance is quite high, with about 95% completing the designated projects. “This may be a kind of medicine. We It is a new treatment method that can be adopted, and it is easier to complete than aerobic exercise training. “Seals also emphasized that this kind of exercise is also helpful for menopausal women. Due to the decrease in estrogen, the vascular endothelial function of menopausal women is improved through exercise. The benefits are not as good as for men, but high-resistance breathing exercises can achieve the same results.
What are the benefits of breathing exercises? Improve brain function and enhance sports performance
The research team pointed out that it is currently unclear why muscle movements during breathing exercises can achieve the effect of lowering blood pressure. It is estimated that the relaxing effect brought by breathing prompts the cells lining the blood vessels to produce more nitric oxide, which in turn helps regulate blood pressure. Preliminary research also believes that this breathing exercise method can also improve brain function and enhance sports performance. The research team is also developing a smartphone application, hoping that more people will be able to practice resistance inspiratory muscle training at home in the future.
Resistance inspiratory muscle training refers to the practice of strengthening the strength and endurance of inspiratory muscles by increasing the training of “diaphragm muscles” and “inspiratory accessory muscles”. Training methods include “sandbag abdominal compression” to increase inhalation pressure, “core muscle training”, “upper and lower limb exercises” and other methods. By increasing the resistance during breathing, it helps patients increase their breathing strength and train corresponding muscle strength.
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