Just 5 minutes of exercise can lower your blood pressure – here’s why

Instead of thinking, ‘I need to go from zero to 60 minutes,’ you can start small and increase the intensity over time. Photo / 123RF
The improvement was minor, but researchers say it provides evidence that even small amounts of exercise can make a difference for our health.
New research has found that adding just five minutes of exercise a day could help to slightly lower your blood pressure.
The ideal blood pressure reading is 120/80 mm Hg, with the larger number measuring the pressure in the arteries as the heart pumps out blood during each beat, and the lower number measuring the pressure as the heart relaxes. The study found that, on average, the top number dropped by 0.68 mm Hg and the bottom number by 0.54 mm Hg, with an additional five minutes of exercise a day.
“It’s a relatively small amount, but any difference helps,” Jo Blodgett, a senior research fellow at the University College London and first author of the study, said Thursday. “A lot of people are not doing enough exercise. Instead of thinking, ‘I need to go from zero to 60 minutes,’ you can start small and then when you get comfortable with that, you can increase the intensity over time.”
High blood pressure affects about 1.3 billion adults around the world, according to the World Health Organization. As a major cause of premature death globally, it is known as the “silent killer” because of its lack of symptoms and can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure and kidney damage.
Exercise has long been recommended for people with high blood pressure or hypertension – but researchers say most of the studies have focused on the effect of structured exercise periods of 30 minutes or more. The new study highlights how even small amounts of additional exercise – which many people may find more manageable – is associated with slightly lowered blood pressure.
“We looked at a 24-hour day and asked, ‘If you change just five minutes between any two behaviours, what happens to that person’s blood pressure’?” Blodgett said. “We found that replacing any kind of behaviour with five minutes of exercise makes a difference.”
The research, published in the journal Circulation on Wednesday, analysed blood pressure and activity data collected from more than 14,000 participants in studies conducted in the Netherlands, Australia, Denmark, Finland and the United Kingdom. The participants continued with their daily routine but with an accelerometer device attached to their thighs to measure their activity.
Participants’ daily activity was split into six categories: sleep, sedentary behaviour, slow walking, fast walking, standing and “exercise-like” effort such as running, cycling or walking uphill or upstairs. The team then modelled statistically what would happen if an individual changed one behaviour for another to estimate the effect on blood pressure for each scenario.
The study found that even an additional five minutes of exercise-like activity per day was associated with a drop in blood pressure, although at least 20 to 27 minutes of exercise a day was needed before clinically significant decreases in blood pressure were observed – a finding consistent with the World Health Organization’s recommendation of 150 minutes of exercise a week.
Nonetheless, Blodgett said she hoped that their finding about the five minutes of physical activity would help encourage people to make lifestyle changes. “That small amount – that five-minute change – really provides something more achievable for people. It doesn’t have to be, ‘Go for a 30-minute run, or an hour-long cycle.’ It can be taking the stairs instead of taking the elevator,” she said.
Naveed Sattar, a professor of cardiometabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow, who was not involved in the study, said it provides more insight into the types of activities that help lower blood pressure.
“The emphasis here is that one of the things that affects people’s blood pressure is how much activity they do or exercise,” he said. “If people can build in small periods of exercise – five, 10, 15 minutes – they will be able to keep their blood pressure down.”
There are a number of factors that can cause or contribute to high blood pressure, including genetics, sedentary lifestyles, smoking, poor diet or heavy alcohol intake. Researchers have found that stress and anxiety can temporarily increase blood pressure as well.
Bryan Williams, the chief scientific and medical officer at the British Heart Foundation, which funded the study, said in a statement that the findings illustrate that people don’t need to make drastic lifestyle changes to improve their blood pressure and that “making simple changes” is a good start.
“Getting active isn’t always easy, but as illustrated by this study, it doesn’t need to be structured or involve going to a gym,” he said. “Anything that gets your heart rate up can help.”