Does Your Diastolic Rise During Exercise?

The response of your cardiovascular system to exercise is a sign of how healthy your body is. One response that indicates health is your blood pressure. Measured by two figures, systole and diastole, your blood pressure represents the amount of force from your blood on your vessels during your heart's contraction and rest. During exercise, your diastolic blood pressure should not change or even decrease.

Normal Diastolic Pressure

Your diastolic blood pressure is measured as a force represented by millimeters of mercury, or mmHg. A normal and healthy diastolic blood pressure is 80 mmHg or less. You are considered pre-hypertensive if your diastolic pressure is between 80 and 89 mmHg. High blood pressure begins with a diastolic pressure between 90 and 99 mmHg and severely high blood pressure is a diastolic pressure greater than 100 mmHg.

Diastole and Aerobic Exercise

Diastolic pressure will not increase with exercise. During aerobic exercise your diastolic pressure will either stay the same or even decrease. Typically, a decrease of 10 mmHg or less is normal during aerobic exercise. An abnormal response occurs when your diastolic pressure rises with aerobic exercise. In fact, an increase of 15 mmHg or more with aerobic exercise may be a sign of heart disease.

Mechanism

The consistency or decrease in diastole during exercise can be accounted for due to your total peripheral resistance. This is the resistance around your body that influences your blood pressure, including dilated and constricted blood vessels. With exercise, your blood vessels widen, lowering the pressure. Although your systolic pressure, blood flow and heart rate all increase, the dilation of your vessels negate any increase you will see in diastole and keep it the same.

Diastole and Resistance Exercise

Resistance training, particularly isometric resistance exercise, produces a different change in diastolic pressure. When you do isometric resistance exercises, your muscles are producing force without movement. This causes your blood vessels to constrict, increasing your diastolic pressure. It is a normal response for your diastolic pressure to increase with isometric resistance exercise.

Chronic Adaptations

Over time your body responds to exercise and adapts. The goal of your heart becomes to serve the body with the blood it needs most efficiently and effectively. Part of this is to reduce your resting blood pressure. With regular exercise, you will see a reduction in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. In fact, you can experience a reduction between 6 and 10 mmHg in diastolic pressure with 30 to 45 minutes of moderate exercise everyday.