A 30-second workout done as little as once a week may help lower blood pressure and boost longevity, a new study suggests.
Researchers in the UK followed 100 relatively sedentary adults for about four weeks to test if isometric exercise training – contracting your muscles while in a static position – could help lower their mildly high blood pressure.
About three times a week, the participants performed wall sits, which involve holding a seated position against the wall to help build lower-body strength.
After those initial four weeks, researchers broke participants into groups and had them complete the exercise once a week, several times weekly or stop exercising entirely.
They found that people who did the wall sits three times a week for another four weeks significantly reduced their blood pressure compared to the control group that did not exercise.
And while the benefits were greatest for the group doing the exercise three times a week, they also found doing a set of wall sits just once a week still meaningfully reduced blood pressure.
Experts believe holding the wall sit position causes tension in the leg muscles and core, temporarily restricting blood flow. When you release that hold, a surge of blood rushes through those vessels, causing the arteries to produce nitric oxide, a gas that widens and relaxes blood vessels.
The process causes blood vessels to become more elastic and responsive, putting less strain on the heart and lowering blood pressure.
A 30-second exercise just a few times a week may significantly lower blood pressure, a new study suggests
The team notes that the exercise, which only takes about 30 seconds at a time, may help lower blood pressure in people with higher levels, reducing their risk of heart attack, stroke and heart disease and promoting longevity.
They also suggest that doing the exercise for a long period of time may lead to structural changes in blood pressure, meaning the benefits wouldn’t disappear as soon as the exercise stopped.
‘For optimal blood pressure reductions and the maintenance of a broader range of physiological adaptations, a frequency of three times per week may be recommended,’ the researchers, from Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK, wrote.
The findings come as nearly half the adult population in the US has high blood pressure, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classify as more than 130mm Hg (millimeters of mercury) over 80mm Hg, written as 130/80.
Consistently high blood pressure forces the heart to beat harder and damages the walls of the arteries, eventually keeping the organ from effectively pumping blood to the rest of the body.
This can result in coronary artery disease, heart attack, heart failure and irregular heart rhythms called arrhythmias.
The study, published in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine, looked at 100 adults with an average systolic blood pressure, the top number in a blood pressure reading, between 120 and 140mm Hg, which is considered slightly high.
About 55 percent of participants were men, and the average age was 37. Participants regularly did less than the federally recommended 150 minutes of moderate activity per week.
In the first phase of the study, all participants completed three training sessions per week for four weeks. Each session involved four 30-second wall sits separated by two-minute rest periods.
In the second phase, researchers divided participants into groups based on how often they completed the exercises: no exercise at all after phase one, once weekly, twice weekly and three times per week. There was also a control group that did not do the exercise at any point.
Researchers measured blood pressure at baseline, four weeks and eight weeks.
After the initial four weeks, participants lowered their systolic blood pressure by 9.45mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) by 5.8mm Hg on average.
Mean arterial pressure, the difference between systolic and diastolic blood pressure, decreased by 6.8mm Hg.
After the second phase, the team found the greatest benefit in people who completed the exercise three times per week for another four weeks. Systolic blood pressure decreased by about 13.7mm Hg.
There was also an average systolic reduction of 6.95mm Hg in the twice weekly group and 6.56mm Hg in those who completed the workout just once per week.
Those who stopped the exercise after the initial four-week phase, meanwhile, lost the benefits they had gained during those first few weeks.
The researchers noted that three times per week was the ideal frequency, though those with only enough time to do the exercise once weekly still saw major benefits.
The team noted that more long-term research is still needed, and they cannot determine if wall sits directly lower blood pressure, though potential benefits are clear.
‘While causality cannot be confirmed, the observed alignment between the mechanistic decline and the loss of blood pressure reduction suggests that training frequency plays a critical role in sustaining the cardiovascular adaptations necessary for blood pressure control following IET,’ the researcher wrote.
‘[The study] may inform policy discussions around feasible, scalable exercise interventions for populations with low adherence or limited exercise tolerance.’
