Just 5 minutes of extra exercise could lower risk of heart attack or stroke: study

By Stephen Beech

Just five minutes of extra exercise per day could help to lower the risk of a heart attack or stroke, according to new research.

Adding small amounts of physical activity into daily routine - such as climbing stairs or cycling to the shops - helps to reduce blood pressure, say scientists.

British and Australian researchers analyzed health data from 14,761 volunteers who wore activity trackers to explore the relationship between daily movement and blood pressure.

The team split the daily activity into six behaviors: sleep, sedentary behavior - such as sitting, slow walking, fast walking, standing, and more vigorous exercise - such as running, cycling or stair climbing.

They then used the data to estimate the impact of replacing one type of activity with another.

The findings showed that replacing any less active behavior with five minutes of exercise could lower systolic blood pressure (SBP) by 0.68 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) by 0.54mmHg2.

Scientists say that a 2mmHg reduction in SBP and a 1mmHg reduction in DPB is equivalent to a reduction of around 10% in cardiovascular disease risk.

The study, supported by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), estimated that such "clinically meaningful" improvements could be achieved with as little as 20 additional minutes of exercise per day for SBP and 10 additional minutes of exercise per day for DBP3.

The findings, published in the journal Circulation, emphasize that even everyday activities that raise heart rate - such as cycling, climbing stairs or short bursts of running - can have benefits for healthy blood pressure.

Study first author Dr. Jo Blodgett, of University College London (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.

“For those who don’t do a lot of exercise, walking did still have some positive benefits for blood pressure.

"But if you want to change your blood pressure, putting more demand on the cardiovascular system through exercise will have the greatest effect.”

The research team combined data from six studies, encompassing 14,761 people from five countries, to see how movement patterns throughout the day are associated with blood pressure.

Each participant used a wearable accelerometer device on their thigh to measure their activity around the clock and had their blood pressure measured.

The average 24-hour day of the participants consisted of around seven hours of sleep, 10 hours of sedentary behavior such as sitting, three hours of standing, one hour of slow walking, one hour of fast walking, and just 16 minutes of exercise activities such as running or cycling.

The team modeled what would happen if a person substituted various amounts of one behavior for another each day, in order to estimate the effect on blood pressure of replacing one behavior with another for a certain amount of time.

Study joint senior author Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, of the University of Sydney in Australia, 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 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.”

Hypertension, the medical term for consistently elevated blood pressure levels, affects more than one billion adults worldwide and is one of the biggest causes of premature death.

It can lead to a stroke, heart attack, heart failure, kidney damage and several other severe health problems, and is often described as the "silent killer" due to the lack of symptoms.

Joint senior author Professor Mark Hamer, of UCL and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health, added: “Wearable activity-tracking devices such as smartwatches, which are not dissimilar to the accelerometers used in this study, are becoming an increasingly important tools for patients to track their physical activity habits and manage risk factors such as high blood pressure.”