I am looking into exercise to reduce resting blood pressure. I am wondering what research people know of that might show which type of exercise (dynamic or isometric) is more effective/efficient. Thanks for your help
Hi John,
I recommend you to read this systematic review with meta-analysis. In general, aerobic exercise training has been shown to reduce blood pressure in different population, being the primary exercise recomendation for hypertensive. Isometric exercise training, especially with handgrip, has been shown to produce similar or higher reductions in blood pressure; however, only few randomized controlled trials were included in this meta-analysis. Thus, further studies are required to confirm these results.
http://jaha.ahajournals.org/content/2/1/e004473.full
Why not do both?
I can agree that a certain type of exercise might lower blood pressure more efficiently, but wouldn't you (as healthcare provider) also want to improve overall well-being/functionality/... ?
If you live in Australia, you might be interested to pursue more vigorous activity.
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2212268
Dear John, i'm absolutely agree with Dr Henrique. as per current literature isometric appears to be better than dynamic in terms of resting BP reduction. the number of trails included in the isometric exercise are too small to conclude concretely. My suggestion is to combare isometric and dynamic along with combination of these will provide better light into this area. All the best.
If you think about cause and effect, it's a matter of stimulating muscles sufficiently, so a large number of their capillaries stay "open" and keep supplying those muscles in say 48 hours of recovery. Stimulating muscle by resistance training (isometric or not) or higher-volume aerobic training will both do the job, but you can keep a bigger cross-section of capillary flow in recovery during the rest of the day and night if you deplete muscle fuel storage, as well as increasing muscle energetic and structural protein turnover. So exhausting aerobic exercise (one hour plus) with large muscle groups (either running or skilled swimming) including high speed efforts to breakdown structural proteins as well, this would be expected to do the best job. I would argue that it does. But then I'm an N of one, even if there are hundreds of repeated measures.
It might be worth your while to check the literature along those lines.
Isometric resistance has the potential to produce a clinically meaningful vasorelaxative effect to resting BP. The effect magnitude is comparably larger than dynamic aerobic or resistance training in some investigation - definitely worth looking into.
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