August 11, 2010

Benefits of Walking as Exercise for High Blood Pressure

Posted in Category : Alternate Therapies

Are you suffering from high blood pressure? Try walking. It’s an easy way to lower your blood pressure. A study shows that walking briskly for 10 minutes, four times a day can lower your blood pressure levels for 11 hours, while a continuous walk for 40 minutes can keep your pressure down for seven hours. Walking and blood pressure are not the only benefits that are seen by an individual. The health benefits of walking as an exercise are many. Walking helps control your cholesterol levels as well as reduces your blood sugar. It also controls your weight. Walking briskly can help you burn about 300 calories per hour.

The risks involved with elevated blood pressure levels are many. Your risk of kidney failure, heart attack, and stroke are increased. If you don’t control your blood pressure, the effort your heart has to put in to pump blood through your arteries is more. There are chances of your heart enlarging, and your risk of heart attacks, kidney failure, atherosclerosis, and stroke are increased.

When you walk for exercise there is an increase in your systolic blood pressure which leads to your blood flow improving. This, in turn, increases the oxygen availability to your working muscles. Your blood vessels might also dilate allowing an increase in blood flow. This will result in your diastolic blood pressure lowering.

Soon after walking, your blood pressure is mostly found to be lower than before exercising. This is definitely seen as a positive response. It has been seen that walking regularly leads to reduced blood pressure in people who are hypertensive.

It is seen that when you stop regular exercise, your blood pressure gets back to its earlier level in a week’s time. It is therefore important that you walk on a regular basis. Regularly exercising for a little while everyday is more beneficial than a large amount of exercise that is done on an irregular basis.

Thus, walking and blood pressure have a direct correlation in most people. The main advantage of walking is that several short walking bouts are found to be beneficial for people instead of one long walk. While walking, make sure your footwear is comfortable. Also wear clothing that is comfortable and loose fitting. Make sure that the clothing you wear is in layers so that you can make adjustments as per the temperature or weather. Walking is a great exercise that has many health benefits. So start walking.