For hypertensive patients, monitoring their blood pressure alone helps to better control the disease.
Monitoring your own blood pressure without the help of a doctor encourages hypertensives to engage in physical activity, according to a new study. A physical activity that itself contributes to naturally lowering tension.
The researchers recruited 24 participants with hypertension and engaged them in a 12-week supervised aerobic exercise program. Half of the patients monitored their blood pressure alone twice a day, before and after exercise. The other half didn’t watch her at all. Both groups exercised on the treadmill for 40 minutes three times a week.
A blood pressure that drops twice as much
Although both groups saw their blood pressure drop at the end of the 12 weeks, the group that monitored themselves reduced their blood pressure approximately twice as much as the group that did not (10 points vs. 5 dots).
A month after the experiment ended, the team surveyed the participants by phone about their condition. In total, about 75% of hypertensives still maintained some level of exercise, but those in the self-monitoring group averaged 70% of their previous exercise volume, compared to the other group, which was only 30%.
In addition, those who continued to monitor their blood pressure alone practiced more intense physical activity than that of the experimental program, ie 45 minutes of exercise at least three and a half days a week.
15 million people in France
Self-monitoring “is very powerful for someone with hypertension, because it shows them that their blood pressure is lower on days when they exercise. There are very few chronic diseases that react in this way to exercise. Imagine if an obese person lost 5 to 7 pounds after a single session of exercise?”, explains Amanda Zaleski, author of the study.
Today, high blood pressure (HTA) affects 15 million people in France, or nearly one in three adults. According to the study Esteban recently published by Public Health France, 36% of adult men are now hypertensive, compared to 25% of women. 60% of people over the age of 65 suffer from this pathology; figures that climb to 80% among those over 80 years old.
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