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Easy 5-Minute Workout Lowers Blood Pressure As Much as Exercise or Medication:

Working out just five minutes daily via a practice described as "strength training for your breathing muscles" lowers blood pressure and improves some measures of vascular health as well as, or even more than, aerobic exercise or medication, new CU Boulder research shows.

The study, published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, provides the strongest evidence yet that the ultra-time-efficient maneuver known as High-Resistance Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training (IMST) could play a key role in helping aging adults fend off cardiovascular disease – the nation's leading killer.

[...] "There are a lot of lifestyle strategies we know can help people maintain cardiovascular health as they age. But the reality is, they take a lot of time and effort and can be expensive and hard for some people to access," said lead author Daniel Craighead, an assistant research professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology. "IMST can be done in five minutes in your own home while you watch TV."

Developed in the 1980s as a way to help critically ill respiratory disease patients strengthen their diaphragm and other inspiratory (breathing) muscles, IMST involves inhaling vigorously through a hand-held device that provides resistance. Imagine sucking hard through a tube that sucks back.

[...] But in recent years, Craighead and colleagues at the University of Arizona have been testing whether a more time-efficient protocol – 30 inhalations per day at high resistance, six days per week could also reap cardiovascular, cognitive, and sports performance improvements.

[...] For the new study, they recruited 36 otherwise healthy adults ages 50 to 79 with above normal systolic blood pressure (120 millimeters of mercury or higher). Half did High-Resistance IMST for six weeks; and half did a placebo protocol, in which the resistance was much lower. Participants didn't know which group they were in.

When assessed after six weeks, the IMST group saw their systolic blood pressure (the top number) dip nine points on average, a reduction which generally exceeds that achieved by walking 30 minutes a day five days a week. That decline is also equal to the effects of some blood pressure-lowering drug regimens.

Even six weeks after they quit doing IMST, they maintained most of that improvement.

Journal References:
1.) Daniel H. Craighead, Thomas C. Heinbockel, Kaitlin A. Freeberg, et alTime‐Efficient Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training Lowers Blood Pressure and Improves Endothelial Function, NO Bioavailability, and Oxidative Stress in Midlife/Older Adults With Above‐Normal Blood Pressure, Journal of the American Heart Association (DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.121.020980)
2.) Michael J. Joyner and Sarah E. Baker. Take a Deep, Resisted, Breath, Journal of the American Heart Association (DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.121.022203)

Original Submission