Story at a glance
- Exercise can lower blood pressure, as can breathing exercises.
- Researchers have recommended a type of resistance training for breathing called inspiratory muscle strength training.
- A new study shows that just five minutes a day of this type of training can have positive effects on blood pressure for individuals with above-average blood pressure.
In a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers report on how High-Resistance Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training (IMST) could help lower blood pressure in people who start out with above-average blood pressure.
Doing exercise can help lower blood pressure, but many adults do not get the necessary amounts of exercise that would benefit them. IMST requires the participant to breathe in and out with a device that adds resistance. It can feel like sucking in air through a tube that is working against you to suck air back out.
“There are a lot of lifestyle strategies we know can help people maintain cardiovascular health as they age. But the reality is, they take a lot of time and effort and can be expensive and hard for some people to access,” said lead author Daniel Craighead in a press release. “IMST can be done in five minutes in your own home while you watch TV.”
Previous studies of IMST recommended longer periods of 30 minutes per day, but this group of researchers were interested in what effect a shorter regimen may have.
Half of the participants in the study did IMST for six weeks and the other half did a placebo protocol. The placebo group did an exercise with much lower resistance.
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The participants in the IMST group had their systolic blood pressure drop on average nine points. This effect could also be observed even six weeks after the experiment period ended.
“We found not only is it more time-efficient than traditional exercise programs, the benefits may be longer lasting,” says Craighead.
The team also found that the participants kept to their programs with 95 percent completion rate of sessions.
“We have identified a novel form of therapy that lowers blood pressure without giving people pharmacological compounds and with much higher adherence than aerobic exercise,” said senior author Doug Seals. “That’s noteworthy.”
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