The Number One Exercise for Lowering Blood Pressure

Exercise in general is often recommended for those with high blood pressure. Typically, the type of exercise recommended is “cardio,” which includes activities such as walking, jogging, swimming, etc. – anything that raises one’s heart rate.

Now, those types of exercises definitely have benefits, as does resistance training, but when it comes specifically to blood pressure, there’s another exercise that leaves them in the dust in terms of the magnitude of blood pressure reduction.

In fact, this one specific exercise produced an average reduction in systolic blood pressure of 10 points – about equivalent to what is generally seen with hypertension medication!

Now, you might be thinking this is going to be complicated, difficult, something that requires you to carve out a bunch of time from your busy schedule to get to the gym, and/or necessitates buying an expensive piece of home equipment that you don’t have room for.

Amazingly, this exercise requires none of that!

It’s a wall squat (also known as a wall sit), in which you put your back up against a wall and lower yourself to where your knees are bent approximately 90 degrees as shown below:

If you have difficulty going to the full 90 degree knee bend position, just go as far as you can. For best results, you hold the position for 1 to 2 minutes. If you can’t go that long, hold the position for as long as you can and gradually increase the time as you get stronger.

A good routine for lowering blood pressure is to do the squat for 1 to 2 minutes, then rest for 1 to 2 minutes. Repeat the cycle 3 to 5 times per session and do 3 sessions per week.

Now this might seem too easy to make a difference, but a study conducted on numerous types of exercise – including much more vigorous ones, found this simple isometric exercise to actually be the best for blood pressure. I suspect this may be due to effects that go beyond the direct muscular and cardiovascular effects – which would tend to be greater with other forms of exercise.

Isometric exercises in general scored better than most other forms of exercise for blood pressure reduction. My theory is that holding muscles in a static contraction might be somehow “re-setting” the body’s neuroreceptors that monitor blood pressure, resulting in better control by the central nervous system. Again, that’s just my personal theory.

How it works is much less important than the fact that, at least for most people, it works!

So, if you have elevated blood pressure, I recommend you give it a try. One word of caution though – if you’re taking some kind of blood pressure medication, I recommend you monitor your blood pressure closely for the first few weeks you do the exercise. If your blood pressure goes too low, you may need to talk to your doctor about adjusting the dosage of your medication.

Until next time…

George F. Best, D.C.