Sydney: Exercising for five minutes per day could reduce blood pressure, new research has found.
The research, which was published by experts from an international academic collaboration led by the University of Sydney and University College London on Thursday, suggested that doing five minutes of physical activity, such as walking uphill or stair climbing every day may help to lower blood pressure.
According to the study by the Prospective Physical Activity, Sitting and Sleep (ProPASS) Consortium, replacing sedentary behavior with 20-27 minutes of exercise per day can result in a clinically meaningful reduction in blood pressure.
"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," Emmanuel Stamatakis, joint senior author and director of the ProPASS Consortium from the University of Sydney, said.
"The finding that doing as little as five extra minutes of exercise per day could be associated with measurably lower blood pressure readings emphasizes how powerful short bouts of higher intensity movement could be for blood pressure management."
The research team analyzed data from 14,761 volunteers to see how replacing one type of movement with another is associated with blood pressure.
The team estimated that replacing sedentary behavior with at least 20 minutes of exercise daily could reduce cardiovascular disease incidence by 28 percent.
The World Health Organisation has estimated that 1.28 billion adults aged 30-79 years worldwide have hypertension, consistent elevated blood pressure, and that 46 percent of adults with hypertension are unaware they have the condition.