Doing THIS exercise for five minutes a day can lower blood pressure, experts reveal

High blood pressure or hypertension is a major risk factor for several serious health conditions, including heart attack, stroke, heart failure, kidney disease, and other complications. Managing blood pressure is crucial for overall health and well-being. Making certain lifestyle changes can help lower blood pressure, and one of them is regular exercise. A new study has found that even five minutes of physical activity can help manage blood pressure!

According to research led by experts from the ProPASS (Prospective Physical Activity, Sitting and Sleep) Consortium, an international academic collaboration led by the University of Sydney and University College London (UCL), even small amount of physical activity, such as uphill walking or stair-climbing, can lower blood pressure. The findings are published in Circulation.

What is hypertension

Hypertension, or a consistently elevated blood pressure level, is one of the biggest causes of premature death globally. This condition affects 1.28 billion adults around the world. High blood pressure happens when the force of the blood pushing against the walls of the blood vessels is too high. It can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure, kidney damage, and many other health problems. Due to the lack of any symptoms, it is often described as a ‘silent killer’.

Even five minutes of exercise matters

The researchers found that just five minutes of activity a day potentially reduces blood pressure. Also, replacing sedentary behaviours with 20-27 minutes of exercise per day made a clinically significant difference in blood pressure. These activities could be uphill walking, stair-climbing, running and cycling.

“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,” joint senior author Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, the Director of the ProPASS Consortium from the Charles Perkins Centre, said in a statement.

The study

To understand how daily movement affects blood pressure, the researchers analyzed health data from 14,761 volunteers across five countries. Each participant used a wearable thigh-mounted accelerometer, which can monitor movement and blood pressure levels throughout the day and night.

The researchers split the daily activity into six categories: sleep, sedentary behaviour (such as sitting), slow walking, fast walking, standing, and more vigorous exercise such as running, cycling, or stair climbing.

The team used statistical models to see how swapping one activity for another would affect blood pressure. They found that replacing sedentary behaviour with 20-27 minutes of exercise per day could potentially reduce cardiovascular disease by up to 28% at a population level.

What are the experts saying
“Our findings suggest that, for most people, exercise is key to reducing blood pressure, rather than less strenuous forms of movement such as walking. The good news is that whatever your physical ability, it doesn’t take long to have a positive effect on blood pressure. What’s unique about our exercise variable is that it includes all exercise-like activities, from running for a bus or a short cycling errand, many of which can be integrated into daily routines,” first author Dr. Jo Blodgett from the Division of Surgery and Interventional Science at UCL and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health said.

“For those who don’t do a lot of exercise, walking still has 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,” Dr. Blodgett added.


Professor Mark Hamer, joint senior author of the study and ProPASS Deputy Director from UCL, said: “Our findings show how powerful research platforms like the ProPASS consortium are for identifying relatively subtle patterns of exercise, sleep, and sedentary behaviour, that have significant clinical and public health importance.”