Although high blood pressure can be genetic, your risk increases because of age, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle. One way to improve your blood pressure and overall cardiovascular fitness is aerobic exercise. Bicycle training, both indoors and out, can be an effective way to help you control your blood pressure and keep you from having to take blood pressure medications.
Significance
Almost 70 million Americans have high blood pressure, according to the American Council on Exercise. The condition is called the "silent killer" because you might not have symptoms until you have a heart attack or stroke. Normal resting blood pressure is less than 120/80 mmHg. The first number is systolic pressure, or the pressure against the artery walls when your heart contracts. The second number is diastolic blood pressure, or the pressure against your artery walls between heartbeats. Prehypertension is defined as a systolic blood pressure reading of 120--139 mmHg and/or a diastolic blood pressure of 80--89 mmHg, and high blood pressure is anything above those numbers.
Identification
Regular physical activity makes your heart stronger, so it can pump more blood with less effort. This in turn reduces how hard your arteries have to work to help lower your blood pressure. The Mayo Clinic recommends 30 minutes of bicycle training most days of the week to help moderate blood pressure, noting that the exercise can decrease both systolic and diastolic values by about 10 points in only three to four weeks.
Expert Insight
Finnish researchers followed men with borderline high blood pressure for nine months. They divided the subjects into a control group and one that used bicycle ergometer training. The results, published in 1982 in the "Annals of Clinical Research," showed that in the training group, diastolic blood pressure decreased significantly after just four months to the point it no longer was any different from men with normal blood pressure.
Considerations
For best results, aim for cycling at a 40 to 60 percent of your VO2 max, or maximal oxygen uptake. If don't have access to a facility to test your VO2 max, you can instead raise your heart rate to between 65 and 85 percent of its maximum. To calculate your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220. The result will be the upper limit of what your cardiovascular system can handle during vigorous exercise. If you're taking blood pressure medication, use the perceived exertion scale instead. This measures how easy or difficult you find an activity, from 0, nothing at all, to 10, maximum exertion. Aim a 2 or 3 on the scale, or light to moderate.
References
- Exercise: A Drug-free Approach to Lowering High Blood Pressure
- American Council on Exercise: Exercise and Hypertension
- PubMed: Physical Training of Middle-aged Men with Borderline Hypertension; K. Kukkonen et al.; 1982
- PubMed: The Effects of Two Aerobic Training Intensities on Ambulatory Blood Pressure in Hypertensive Patients: Results of a Randomized Trial; W.D. Moreira; July 1999
- University of New Mexico.: Exercise and Resting Blood Pressure
