today I'm going to show you three exercises that may be the best options for lowering your blood pressure and I'm going to tell you all of it while doing those exercises I hope it doesn't take me too many takes because my thighs may burn I'm Dr Blake Shusterman I'm a board certified nephrologist or kidney doctor and I treat high blood pressure in my office all day make sure you like subscribe and share this video and remember everything we talk about is Just for information this is not medical advice make sure you talk to your doctor
before you start a new exercise program there was a study recently published that looked at a systematic review of all the exercises that have been study to see if they lower your blood pressure so a systematic review is a study of studies so this study looked at all the studies that were done over the last 25 years and reviewed a whole bunch of different types of exercises to see how much they lower your blood pressure and which one was the best what they found was that isometric exercise training May lower your blood pressure more than
any other type of training so they looked at isometric training they looked at high-intensity training they looked at resistance training they looked at combined resistance training and they looked at traditional aerobic exercise and things like running or biking and they found that this type of exercise this isometric exercise like wallet may be the best the other thing they found and that was the greatest news is that any type of exercise May lower your blood pressure this one may do it the best but aerobic exercise or resistance training any of those things will bring your blood
pressure down some but this one may do it more than any of them so let's start with the wall sits so this is a great place to start these wall sits kind of with your legs just barely bent against the wall you still feel that burn in your thighs but it is not as difficult as when you go lower and if you're just starting on an exercise routine you can vary the angle of your knees you can vary how long you hold it you can vary how often you do it but these are isometric exercises
so we're not like going up down up down we are holding so these muscles are in a constant state of contraction so the theory with these isometric exercises is that you hold them and you contract your muscles and then when you relax them the blood rushes in and your blood vessels kind of relax and expand and that teaches compliance in those blood vessels and if you have compliance in your blood vessels there are likely to be more relaxed when the blood flows through them and that can lower your blood pressure at least that's the theory
the other thing that's great about these isometric exercises and here we are number two this is just a regular squat you can hold it low middle or high and that gets again those thighs right there contracts them and you can do this anywhere anytime you can vary it you don't need any equipment you can do it at home and things like those wall squats according to the study May lower your blood pressure by 10 millimeters of mercury that is amazing the last type of isometric exercise I'm going to show you is these planks again we're
not moving significantly we're not doing aerobic exercise we're just holding contractions in the muscles for anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes and planks are something that you can vary as well so if you can't do full planks like this you can go down on your forearm if you can't do planks like this on your forearms you can go down on your knees these can be done at home and are a great way to start an exercise routine no matter what age you are all right let's go back up now honestly these results have been
one of the most shocking results that I've seen in the studies that I've reviewed I did not expect that these type of exercises would lower your blood pressure more than running on the threadmill it's really encouraged me to do more of these exercises in my daily routine and I just think it's a great way for people to start if they're looking to exercise or if they're used to doing other things and they need to incorporate something like this now do I think this is the final analysis I don't think so this is a study of
studies so a systematic review which can have significant problems and I truly believe that any exercise is great exercise so it doesn't matter how you get moving just get moving this is an easy way to start although not so easy if you're trying to do a video and keep your breath while holding this difficult position thanks so much for watching today I'm Dr Blake Schusterman I'm a board certified nephologist and I'm also the cooking dock I hope this inspires you to get moving you can incorporate some isometric exercises into your day very easily wall squats
wall sits planks holding out your arms like this a lot of different ways you can do it and they may lower your blood pressure significantly thanks for watching check out my website cooking do.com for lots of other recipes and other health tips make sure you subscribe like and share we will see you next [Music] time