High blood pressure affects 1.28 billion adults worldwide and is one of the biggest causes of premature death. It can lead to strokes, heart attacks, heart failure, kidney damage and many other health problems, and is often described as a silent killer due to its lack of symptoms.

Experts have long known that exercise is good for the heart. But researchers at University College London and the University of Sydney wanted to see whether even a tiny amount of additional effort could make a difference.

In the study, they followed about 15,000 people who wore activity trackers for 24 hours to explore the relationship between daily movement and blood pressure. The results showed that adding just five minutes of exercise into a person’s daily routine, such as climbing stairs or cycling to the shops, was enough to produce improvements in blood pressure.

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The findings of the study, supported by the British Heart Foundation, were published in the journal Circulation. Dr Jo Blodgett, the first author of the study, from UCL, said: “Our findings suggest that, for most people, exercise is key to reducing blood pressure, rather than less strenuous forms of movement such as walking.

“The good news is that, whatever your physical ability, it doesn’t take long to have a positive effect on blood pressure. What’s unique about our exercise variable is that it includes all exercise-like activities, from climbing the stairs to a short cycling errand, many of which can be integrated into daily routines.”

Among the study participants who did not do a lot of exercise, walking did still have some positive benefits for blood pressure, Blodgett said. “But if you want to change your blood pressure, putting more demand on the cardiovascular system through exercise will have the greatest effect.”

An extra five minutes of any exercise that raises the heart rate could lower systolic blood pressure (SBP) by 0.68 millimetres of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) by 0.54mmHg.

Systolic is the top number in a blood pressure reading and represents pressure when the heart pushes blood out around the body. Diastolic is the bottom number and is the pressure when the heart rests between beats.

At a population level, a 2mmHg reduction in SBP and a 1mmHg reduction in DPB is equivalent to an approximately 10% reduction in the risk of heart disease, the researchers say.

Prof Emmanuel Stamatakis, the joint senior author of the study, from the University of Sydney, said: “High blood pressure is one of the biggest health issues globally, but there may be relatively accessible ways to tackle the problem in addition to medication.

“The finding that doing as little as five extra minutes of exercise or vigorous incidental activities a day could be associated with measurably lower blood pressure readings emphasises how powerful short bouts of higher intensity movement could be for blood pressure management.”

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