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Significant amount of studies in relation to blood pressure and exercise has shown that regular physical activity is one of the best and easiest ways to help lower blood pressure for people who suffer from hypertension.
And with a decrease in blood pressure, there is also a decrease in other related ailments such as heart attacks, stroke, body fat percentage and blood vessels diseases. Besides that, exercise improves ones fitness level making them feel better.
Practically, nearly all exercise that you know of can be used to lower blood pressure, however the best thing to do in order to increase your chances of success is to selectively choose the kind of exercise that you enjoy and the most convenient.
You can either choose from activities such swimming, jogging, bike riding or spinning, walking and even aerobics as long as there is continuity and you won’t give up when the going gets tough.
There are various ways through which exercise can lower blood pressure. Moderate to slightly intense workouts done a couple of hours over a certain period of time will somehow help in cutting fat therefore reducing your blood pressure.
Similarly, when you breathe more rapidly or sweat during such activities, this helps your body to remove water and salt therefore lowers the blood pressure.
Such physical activities usually affect two major hormones in our body, one is adrenaline hormone and the other one is the insulin.
Sometimes when we are too excited, stressed or anxious, the adrenaline hormone is fully activated causing a sudden increase in blood pressure and so with consistent exercise the resting levels of this hormone can be reduced. This then lowers your heart rate levels therefore a decrease in blood pressure.
On the other hand, insulin which is made in the pancreas helps to control sugar levels in the body and circulates mostly in our bloodstream. When body fat percentage is high, insulin level might also be high therefore increasing the rate at which the body store salt by making the kidneys to hold more sodium.
And the end result of this is high blood pressure. What regular exercise does is to reduce these insulin level and as a result of these reduction, the blood pressure also goes down.
To know how long you should exercise, there are various things you must always consider; type of exercise, the intensity (how hard), the duration (how long) and the frequency (how often).
The ideal formula for a good workout is to at least consider any type of cardiovascular, endurance or weight lifting exercise that you like done at 65 to 75 per cent of your maximal heart rate for 20 minutes increasing to 40 minutes at least three to four times a week.
However, just as many people keep on looking for larger doses of medicine to control their blood pressure, you can as well increase your exercise intensity and the number of days for your exercise for great results.
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