3 Simple Exercises to Help Lower Blood Pressure!

Today I'm going to show you three exercises that may be the best options for lowering your blood pressure and I'm going to tell you all of it while doing those exercises. I hope it doesn't take me too many takes because my thighs may burn. I'm Dr. Blake Shusterman. I'm a board certified nephrologist or kidney doctor and I treat high blood pressure in my office all day. Make sure you like, subscribe and share this video and remember everything we talk about is just for information. There was a study recently published that looked at a systematic review of all the exercises that have been studied to see if they lower your blood pressure. So a systematic review is a study of studies. So this study looked at all the studies that were done over the last 25 years and reviewed a whole bunch of different types of exercises to see how much they lower your blood pressure and which one was the best. What they found was that isometric exercise training may lower your blood pressure more than any other type of training. So they looked at isometric training, they looked at high intensity training, they looked at resistance training, they looked at combined resistance training and they looked at traditional aerobic exercise and things like running or biking. And they found that this type of exercise, this isometric exercise like wall sits may be the best. The other thing they found and that was the greatest news is that any type of exercise may lower your blood pressure. This one may do it the best, but aerobic exercise or resistance training, any of those things will bring your blood pressure down some, but this one may do it more than any of them. So let's start with wall sits. So this is a great place to start these wall sits kind of with your legs just barely bent against the wall. You still feel that burn in your thighs, but it is not as difficult as when you go lower. And if you're just starting on an exercise routine, you can vary the angle of your knees, you can vary how long you hold it, you can vary how often you do it, but these are isometric exercises. So we're not like going up, down, up, down, we are holding. So these muscles are in a constant state of contraction. So the theory with these isometric exercises is that you hold them and you contract your muscles and then when you relax them, the blood rushes in and your blood vessels kind of relax and expand and that teaches compliance in those blood vessels. And if you have compliance in your blood vessels, they are likely to be more relaxed when the blood flows through them and that can lower your blood pressure. At least that's the theory. The other thing that's great about these isometric exercises, and here we are number two, this is just a regular squat. You can hold it low, middle, or high, and that gets, again, those thighs right there, contracts them, and you can do this anywhere, anytime. You can vary it, you don't need any equipment, you can do it at home. And things like those wall squats, according to the study, may lower your blood pressure by 10 millimeters of mercury. That is amazing. The last type of isometric exercise I'm going to show you is these planks. Again, we're not moving significantly, we're not doing aerobic exercise, we're just holding contractions in the muscles for anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes. And planks are something that you can vary as well. So if you can't do full planks like this, you can go down on your forearms. If you can't do planks like this on your forearms, you can go down on your knees. These can be done at home and are a great way to start an exercise routine no matter what age you are. All right, let's go back up. Now, honestly, these results have been one of the most shocking results that I've seen in the studies that I've reviewed. I did not expect that these type of exercises would lower your blood pressure more than running on the treadmill. It's really encouraged me to do more of these exercises in my daily routine, and I just think it's a great way for people to start if they're looking to exercise or if they're used to doing other things and they need to incorporate something like this. Now, do I think this is the final analysis? I don't think so. This is a study of studies, so a systematic review which can have significant problems. And I truly believe that any exercise is great exercise, so it doesn't matter how you get moving, just get moving. This is an easy way to start, although not so easy if you're trying to do a video and keep your breath while holding this difficult position. Thanks so much for watching today. I'm Dr. Blake Schusterman. I'm a board-certified nephrologist, and I'm also the Cooking Doc. I hope this inspires you to get moving. You can incorporate some isometric exercises into your day very easily, wall squats, wall sits, planks, holding out your arms like this, a lot of different ways you can do it, and they may lower your blood pressure significantly. Thanks for watching. Check out my website, cookingdoc.com, for lots of other recipes and other health tips. Make sure you subscribe, like, and share. We will see you next time.