Exercise provides outstanding protection to people with high blood pressure

Exercise provides outstanding protection to people with high blood pressure....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 4-26-2012

The recent news on this is dramatic if the conclusions of the researchers are accurate.

1.  What we already knew gives substantial credibility to their conclusion too.:

a) We already know that right after you exercise as your body recovers from the effort, your blood pressure goes down.  And it will often then be lower than it was before you began exercising.

b) We know that your average blood pressure all day is usually lower on every day you exercise than it is on days when you do not.

c) We know that regular vigorous exercise almost every day gives you considerable heart protection.:  

Your resting heart rate goes down because your heart is stronger.  

Your potentially harmful LDL cholesterol and triglycerides go down and your protective HDL goes up.  

Research has found that this is because exercise directly reduces the small particle LDL that causes heart disease in your blood.

Imagine pouring sticky sand into an engine where the sand is fine enough it sticks in the chinks in the engine.  Small particle LDL does exactly that to the insides of your blood vessels because it's so tiny it literally sticks into the molecular chinks in your artery walls.

Beside lowering LDL overall, exercise converts a lot of what's left to larger particles that roll harmlessly over your artery walls like tumbleweeds.

So, by doing this, exercise gives you considerable heat protection just from that.

But there's more!  There's a LOT more!

Just like your blood pressure, after you exercise, your level of chronic inflammation that also tends to cause heart disease goes down.  So you get that protection too.

And, recent research found that the effect of exercise on your heart protection improves every year the longer you exercise.

Lastly, aging tends to increase heart disease risk.  But work at Stanford found that regular, vigorous exercise dramatically slows aging!

2.  So what did they find out in the recent research?

Last Thursday, 4-19-2012, HealthDay news had this:  “Exercise May Help Patients With High Blood Pressure Live Longer

Large study…found inactive people fared worse at all blood-pressure levels”

“Exercise reduced the risk of death in people with high blood pressure during the course of a new 12-year study.”

(Large is a justified use because they included more than 434,000 people!  That means their conclusion is statistically extremely strong.)

This is the dramatic part:  “The researchers also found that inactivity increased the risk of death during the study approximately the same amount as would an increase in blood pressure of 40 to 50 milligrams of mercury.”

That quite literally is a HUGE difference – almost incredibly so!

And, it makes a big difference in safety and quality of life to you if you have or ever get high blood pressure.

Here’s why:

115 over 75 is desirable and almost heart disease risk free blood pressure. 

Forty points higher on the diastolic or second reading is about 176 over 115.  But that is a level that is so high and above 160 over 100 that statistically it’s been found that your doctor should have you take drugs to lower it!

And, fifty points higher is about 192 over 125 almost high enough your doctor would send you to the ER for emergency treatment!

THAT is how spectacular they believe their results are!

Wow!

It’s simple. 

People who learn how to do vigorous exercise safely by building up to it gradually and giving themselves periodic short rest breaks as they exercise are so protected, they may be safe taking NO drugs to lower it even if their readings are sky high.

For sure these results suggest that if you take lower doses of some blood pressure drugs that in you have few side effects and get your blood pressure down to about 152 over 90 or less.

Then exercising will give you far better protection than loading on more drugs or higher doses and suffering though poor qualify of life and risking serious side effects.

But that outcome is exactly what many doctors now routinely and often do instead!

This research says that you are actually safer if you exercise instead.

That means the standard of care for high blood pressure should move immediately to little or no treatment with drugs for most people and significant and focused efforts to help people with high blood pressure get safely into regular exercise.

But there’s more here too!

One kind of exercise, Tai Chi, when done every week, lowers blood pressure from stress relief by an average of 17 over 11.

And, turning off drinking all soft drinks and eating junky foods and eating the DASH II diet with extra vegetables and some extra virgin olive oil and even a small moderate intake of red wine, lowers blood pressure almost that much.

That means that people now who hate their horrible quality of life taking high blood pressure drugs, have a real shot of increasing their safety while gradually stepping down to zero the drugs they take!

If this is you or someone you know.  This isn’t just good news, it’s life changing good news!

(Important note:  Recent research found that such exercise will harm you if you take statin drugs. 

But that’s OK since there are far better ways to prevent heart disease than taking statin drugs for almost everyone who isn’t in the ICU with a recent heart attack.

See our recent post:  “Statins do prevent you from benefiting from exercise!” posted on Thursday, 4-5-2012.)