Exercise and Healthy Eating Make a Good Team
The best way to lower your high blood pressure is to cut your calories and exercise. A new study shows doing both has a better effect than either alone.
Researchers from Osaka University Medical School in Japan studied 60 overweight men with high blood pressure. The first group consumed a low-calorie diet for 24 weeks. Meanwhile, the second group participated in aerobic exercise for one hour everyday. The last group dieted and exercised. Researchers measured the participants’ body mass index (BMI), fat percentage and blood pressure every two weeks for two months.
After 12 weeks, BMI fell 17 percent in the diet-plus-exercise group, 14 percent in the exercise alone group and 12 percent in the diet alone group. Fat percentage dropped 25 percent in the diet-and-exercise group, 27 percent in the exercise only group and 9 percent in the diet only group. Blood pressure in the combination group dropped the most, followed by the exercise group.
After 24 weeks, BMI decreased an extra 4 percent in the exercise only group. It fell 2 percent in both the diet alone and combination groups. Lead researcher Kazuko Masuo, M.D., Ph.D., from Osaka University Medical School, says exercise burns fat and reduces insulin levels, which lowers blood pressure. A low-calorie diet also reduces insulin levels. Dr. Masuo hopes the findings, presented this week at the 55th Annual Fall Conference of the American Heart Association Council for High Blood Pressure, will convince doctors to inform patients diet-plus exercise is the most effective method to lower blood pressure.