One simple move could lower your blood pressure by 10% without medication
Getting a grip on your health is easier than you think.
A firm grip has long been associated with a macho image. But it turns out an increased handgrip strength can help both women and men reduce the dangers associated with high blood pressure. According to the American Heart Association, over 100 million Americans have high blood pressure, which it defines as being above 130/80. High blood pressure, known as hypertension, increases the risk of stroke. And usually increases as a problem with age.
The typical treatment for high blood pressure is pressure-reducing drugs such as beta blockers, or intensive aerobic exercise totaling 70 minutes a week, or both. But you may be concerned about side effects from medication. And may not have the time for long workouts.
An alternative approach
Increasing your hand grip strength often works just as well as meds. That’s where grip exercises come in.
In the early 1970s, two New York doctors published breakthrough papers that looked at the effects of intense, whole-body isometric exercise on blood pressure. Isometric exercise, which requires you to put a muscle in tension and hold it without moving, initially raised blood pressure when performed for brief periods. But when the exercise was continued over time, blood pressure actually began to fall and remain lower.
Then in 1992, Ronald Wiley, a pulmonologist at Miami University in Ohio, devised a study that used only isometric handgrip exercise instead of the whole body. He had young men train with 30% of their maximum grip strength for two minutes, alternating hands after a brief rest.
Increasing your hand grip strength often works just as well as meds.
The results were pretty dramatic. After eight weeks of the isometric exercises three times a week, the eight subjects had reductions of 12.5 in their systolic blood pressure (the top number given in a blood pressure reading). And 14.9 in their diastolic blood pressure.
Wiley’s experiment has been repeated numerous times with similar results. A meta-analysis of 18 studies, which looks at pooled data, by Danielle Bentley and colleagues at the University of Toronto concluded: “Handgrip exercise is an effective modality for resting BP reduction, resulting in clinically significant reductions for men and women of all ages.” Another meta-analysis by Australian doctors reached a similar conclusion.
Curiously, no one has been able to adequately explain why the handgrip exercise works so well. It simply does.
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Getting your grip on
Ready to try handgrip exercises for yourself? It couldn’t be simpler. You need to squeeze some kind of resistance bar or band with one hand, for two minutes. Then rest for two minutes and switch to the other hand. Do two sets for each hand.
The challenge is figuring out your maximum amount of effort. To get the most effect from the exercise, you need to hold for the two minutes at 30% of your maximum effort.
There are now elaborate devices available, such as the Zona Plus. It measures the maximum output and then displays the required grip strength on a small computer screen.
But the same can be achieved with a much less expensive device known as a hand dynamometer. It’s available online for about $30. It has a squeezable handle and a liquid crystal digital display showing the force being used.
A British blogger posted a Youtube video showing exactly how to perform the exercise based in the published research.
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we all know that blood pressure is bad
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for us but is there a scientifically
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proven way to reduce your blood pressure
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just by doing a few exercises a few
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minutes a week if you're interested
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watch this
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[Music]
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space so first the problem high blood
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pressure uh if you're thinking about the
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UK about 16 million uh people in the UK
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have high blood pressure now why that's
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important is that uh as blood pressure
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increases your risk of um heart disease
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atherosclerosis and stroke also
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increases now this isn't just one study
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there are hundreds of studies that all
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point to the same thing uh there is a
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little bit of controversy about what is
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the correct blood pressure at the moment
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it's 120 over 80 so that's the
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recommended goal but here's the main
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point that you might not have known is
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that anything over 120 if you just raise
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by 20 millime of mercury so that's to
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140 then 160 your risk of heart disease
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or stroke doubles so uh that's really
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the reason why uh you hear all these
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Public Health announcements to try and
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get blood pressure under control so one
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of the main things unfortunately is as
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we get older blood pressure tends to
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creep up and one of the reasons for this
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is that the arteries become less elastic
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so the contraction from your heart is
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normally absorbed or buffered by the
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elasticity of your arteries and this
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decreases over time so you're more
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susceptible to those variations uh
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through um uh the mechanics of pumping
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blood around your body uh some
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Publications have shown that um if you
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keep your blood pressure under control
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you can expect to Live 5 years longer
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than those who don't so getting your
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blood pressure under control seems
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worthwhile there are several factors
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that can help get your blood pressure
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under control healthy diet exercise
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avoiding obesity all those things you've
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heard around a million times and of
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course if those don't work then uh there
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are therapies you can go on ACE
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inhibitors beta blockers can calcium
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channel openers they're all very
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effective uh products but very recently
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there's been interest in isometric
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exercises so what are isometric
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exercises uh they're incredibly simple
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isometric exercises are just exercises
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where you maintain muscular tension for
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a set period of time it's been shown
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that hand grip exercises keeping tension
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for some reason reduces blood pressure
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so let's go into detail uh how would you
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do these so here's the dynamometer here
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so you can get these on Amazon and uh
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they cost you know they're really cheap
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about20 something like this or if you're
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even after something cheaper there are
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these uh hand grip exercises that you
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can get based on Springs and they're
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about a few pounds or a few dollars that
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you can pick up from any shop it's
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pretty simple so what you do is you get
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your dynamometer or something like this
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I'll put the on
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button
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I don't know if that's showing properly
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and you grip it and you grip it to 30%
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of your strength so if you can grip 60
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kilog it's about uh uh 20 kg you'll keep
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it hover it around there can you see it
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going keep hovering uh keep it there for
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2 minutes 2 minutes hold it for 2
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minutes and then you release and then
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you wait for 2 minutes just wait do
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nothing and then with your different uh
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with uh your other hand you do it again
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and uh I'm getting up to about 16 about
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30% of your full strength hold it for
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another 2 minutes and then you repeat so
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you just go to that hand again grip for
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2 minutes wait for 2 minutes and then
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grip again for 2
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minutes bizarre does it work again I'm
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not interested in old wives tales or
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anything like this all this is in
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scientific peer-reviewed papers so it's
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worth a shot
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so what's the evidence so the evidence
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has really been building over years but
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they all point in the same direction I'm
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going to list some of the papers down
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below so that you can have a look at
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them but they all seem to show that uh
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you can expect a blood pressure drop
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between 9 mm and 16 mm that is similar
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efficacy to some of the uh main blood
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pressure lowering drugs on the market at
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the moment what I would say is uh to
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complement this it's always a good idea
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to know what your blood pressure is uh
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it's really easy to stick your head in
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the sand and not um not worry about it
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but it will come and bite you in the
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butt later so as with all these things
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uh if it brings real benefit and
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importantly it's based on evidence not
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wies taale real evidence then it might
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be worth doing and all the evidence is
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pointing in the same direction that it
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really does bring blood pressure down
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the one caveat to This research is the
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papers although they all go in the in
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the same direction they are pretty small
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the numbers of patients that were
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involved I would like to see uh uh a
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study where they're using you know a
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thousand individuals or something but
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I'm not sure it's going to happen
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because it costs a lot of money and no
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one's going to make any money out of
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this there's not a pharmaceutical
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product involved so yeah I wouldn't hold
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my breath so what's the mechanism how
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can this work how can simple handgrip
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exercises work the short answer is the
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mechanism isn't known but broadly it's
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believed that there's Paras sympathetic
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Pathways that affect your nerves and the
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end result is um vasod dilation so it
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causes your arteries to dilate but the
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mechanism is not really known at the
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moment if you want further reading I'll
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put the links to all these down below
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and again as always thanks for
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watching
And yes, the whole thing only requires eight minutes of squeezing. Grab your device and flip on the morning news, or read a few stories in the paper, and presto! you’re done.
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