Issue 169 Item 6 Just Ten Minutes of Modest Exercise Reduces Blood Pressure in S

Just 1 hour of exercise per week halved the risk of cardiovascular disease!

“Regular aerobic exercise is widely recommended for essential hypertensives,” Dr. Kazuko Ishikawa-Takata, of the National Institute of Health and Nutrition, Tokyo, Japan, and colleagues note. “However, it is not clear how much exercise is needed to reduce blood pressure (BP).”

In an 8-week exercise intervention study, the researchers examined the dose-response relation of exercise training and BP in 207 untreated hypertensive patients. The patients were divided into five groups depending on duration per week of exercise: sedentary controls, 30 to 60 min/week, 61 to 90 min/week, 91 to 120 min/week, and more than 120 min/week.

There were no differences among the groups in terms of age, gender, height, body mass, body mass index, dietary intake, and baseline BP.

No changes in BP were observed in the non-exercising control group. On the other hand, all of the subjects in the exercise groups experienced significant reductions in both systolic and diastolic BP.
“The magnitude of reductions in systolic BP was greater in the 61 to 90 min/week group compared with the 30 to 60 min/week group (p < 0.05)," the investigators report. "There were no greater reductions in systolic BP with further increases in exercise volume." The mean exercise duration in the 61 to 90 min/week group was 75 min/week. The reduction in systolic pressure was about 12 mm Hg, and the drop in diastolic about 8 mm Hg. There were no significant differences in the magnitude of reductions in diastolic BP between the exercising groups.
No obvious associations were found between exercise frequency per week and the magnitude of reductions in BP with exercise training, Dr. Ishikawa-Takata and colleagues found.

They note that guidelines recommend 30 to 60 minutes of exercise on most days, although a recent epidemiologic study found that just 1 hour of exercise per week halved the risk of cardiovascular disease. “Our present findings are consistent with this epidemiologic study and raise the possibility that an amount of exercise that is much smaller than the recent guidelines suggest may be required to reduce arterial BP in hypertensive subject,” the investigators conclude.

“Even 30 to 60 minutes of exercise per week were sufficient” for this purpose, they point out, while stressing that more exercise is warranted “depending on the cardiovascular risk factor of interest.” Am J Hypertens 2003;16:629-633.

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