Derek Burnett
Derek Burnett is a Contributing Writer at Bottom Line Personal, where he writes frequently on health and wellness. He is also a contributing editor with Reader’s Digest magazine.
One of the most beneficial aspects of cardiovascular exercise is its effect on blood pressure. Maintaining a healthy blood pressure is crucial for health and longevity, since high blood pressure (also known as hypertension) is closely linked with heart attack, stroke, kidney damage, loss of vision, cognitive decline, and even erectile dysfunction. Fortunately, most people can bring their blood pressure down through just a few months of exercise.
As the name suggests, blood pressure is a measure of the force of the blood against the walls of the arteries each time the heart beats. If you didn’t know any better, you might think that more pressure would be good…after all, everybody loves a garden hose that spews water with some oomph, and a shower head with lots of pressure sure beats one that dribbles weakly. But a heart pumping with too much pressure is definitely not a good thing, since over time it causes damage to blood vessels, which leads to disease.
To understand why high blood pressure is not a good thing, it’s helpful to realize that it doesn’t occur as a result of a strong heart pulsing powerfully but rather because of changes to the blood vessels which put a strain on the heart, forcing it to work harder. In other words, think of it not as how powerfully your heart works, but how hard your heart is being forced to work.
Blood pressure is expressed using two numbers that look like a fraction. The first number is systolic blood pressure, which is a capture of the pressure in the arteries between each heartbeat. The second number is diastolic pressure, which expresses the amount of pressure on the arteries while the heart is beating. According to the American Heart Association, optimal blood pressure means having a systolic pressure less than 120 and a diastolic pressure less than 80.
If your numbers are higher than that, you’ll need to discuss the best methods for bringing them back down into the optimal range. That may involve medication. But even if medication is part of the plan, your best bet is to incorporate dietary changes and an exercise regime to augment the effects of the drug.
While strength or resistance training, balance exercises, and flexibility exercises are all important for overall health and fitness, there’s just one type of exercise that’s going to make the greatest difference when it comes to reducing your blood pressure, and that’s aerobic exercise, also referred to as “cardio.”
The word “aerobic” itself is a hint as to what’s special about this form of exercise, since “aerobic” means “requiring oxygen.” Thus, aerobic exercises are those that cause you to breathe harder and cause your heart to beat more quickly over a prolonged period. When you push your heart and lungs in this way on a regular basis, they become stronger. Your heart muscle becomes more powerful and thus able to work more efficiently, pumping a greater quantity of oxygen-rich blood out to your tissues with each beat. Even at rest, the heart of someone with good cardiovascular fitness will beat less often than someone out of shape, while still delivering plenty of blood to the body. And, as your heart gets stronger, your lung capacity also increases, meaning you can take in more oxygen with each breath. Aerobic exercise even causes an increase in the number of blood vessels in your body.
The overall result is a strong and efficient system of oxygen delivery. If you think of your heart as a machine, it’s easy to conceptualize how aerobic exercise is good for you…Imagine an undersized engine forced to propel a large vehicle. It will not be long before the engine gives out under the strain. In the same way, a small, weak heart struggling inefficiently to pump blood out to the body will not last as long as one “built to size” through regular aerobic exercise.
Good news: To lower your blood pressure, you don’t have to kill yourself on a treadmill every day or run mile after mile in your neighborhood every morning. In a study of more than 1,200 men age 70 and over, participants were able to achieve moderate levels of cardiovascular fitness just by taking a brisk 20- to 40-minute walk most days, which amounted to reducing their risk of death by 36%. And just four hours of exercise per week lowered blood pressure by 19%.
People often ask this question because they imagine a hierarchy in which some forms of exercise are superior to others. The truth is that when it comes to cardiovascular fitness and blood pressure control, the specific form of exercise is less important than what the exercise is doing to your heart and lungs. When the goal is purely cardiovascular fitness and blood pressure control, as long as you’re pushing your respiratory and cardiovascular systems it doesn’t much matter what specific movements you perform. Whether you choose to walk, jog, run, swim, cycle, dance, do martial arts, or play a ball sport, the important thing is that you elevate your breathing and heart rate for a prolonged period. And if you’re taking an exercise class, don’t focus all your energy on getting every movement perfect; it’s more important that you simply move. If you’re exercising at a moderate intensity, meaning you can still have a conversation while you’re doing it but are too out-of-breath to sing, then you’re doing it right, and 30 minutes at that pace should be long enough for each session.
You may have heard of High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), which is an approach to aerobic exercise in which you alternate short bursts of intense activity with longer periods at a lower intensity. For example, you might jog for three minutes, sprint for 30 seconds, and repeat for several times during a session. This is a good way to keep a workout quick, interesting, and challenging, and there’s science suggesting that it’s very effective. But some people would prefer to work out for longer at a slower pace, and that’s fine, too.
When choosing your aerobic exercise (or exercises) consider the following….
It might sound like pseudoscience, but you can really lower your blood pressure by performing breathing exercises. The key is to slow the breath from the normal 12-18 breaths per minute to a relaxed 6-8, incorporating a slow, drawn-out exhalation. When you do this, you put your nervous system into its “rest-and-digest mode,” lowering the heart rate, widening the blood vessels, and delivering “feel-good” chemicals to the brain. In a 2023 review of 20 studies, 17 of them found that breathing exercises were associated with decreases in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Another study found that systolic pressure dropped by nearly 10 points through breath work…all without medication.
There are many variations of these breathing exercises which appear to be effective. To start out, simply inhale slowly and deeply for a five-count, filling your abdomen, then exhale for another five-count, and repeat for a few minutes. Another method is to inhale for four seconds, hold your breath for seven, then release your breath over an eight-second period. For any such exercises, inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Aim for a 15-minute session. You can find guided exercises on several apps and websites.
