Here’s an article from the UK looking at a big group wearing activity trackers and evaluating what makes a difference for blood pressure. The original article in Circulation is chocked full of interesting stuff for the data geek, and not surprisingly complex interrelationships are discovered between different types of activity and the resulting blood pressure effects. What’s tricky is that the data is always reported for the population, and a change of less than 1 counts as significant (but that wouldn’t be significant for you!). A couple of meaningful takeaways are:

If you don’t get enough sleep, getting more sleep will make a significant difference, especially if you kick in exercise (climbing stairs, exercise at the gym, running for the bus – not just walking) along with it.
If you are sitting around a lot (more than 10 hours a day), AND you get a lot of sleep, getting MORE SLEEP WILL RAISE YOUR BP! Getting more exercise definitely drop lower your blood pressure.
It’s going to take 20-27 minutes of exercise a day to move your top BP number (systolic) and 10-15 minutes a day to more your bottom number (diastolic)

You’ve heard me say it before – get moving!

FROM MEDSCAPE UK / BY Jenny Blair

TOPLINE:

Meaningful blood pressure reduction can take place by re-allocating as little as 10 minutes spent in other activities over a 24-hour period to exercise-like activity.

METHODOLOGY:

Analysis of pooled data from six cross-sectional cohort studies, the Prospective Physical Activity, Sitting, and Sleep consortium (ProPASS) collaboration.
Participants (n = 14,761) wore 24-hour movement trackers.
Devices totaled average daily time spent doing six activities: sleeping, sedentary time, standing, slow walking, fast walking, and exercise-like activity.
The outcome of interest was blood pressure.

TAKEAWAY:

Each extra 5 minutes of exercise-like activity was linked to slight but statistically reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressure (−0.68 mmHg and −0.54 mmHg, respectively).
The above reductions were meaningful in reducing, eg, stroke risk on the population level.
Exercising instead of other activities for an average of 20-27 minutes throughout the course of the day was estimated to result in clinically significant systolic reductions for individuals.
Similarly, exercising instead of other activities 10-15 minutes was estimated to result in clinically significant diastolic reductions.

IN PRACTICE:

"The exercise-like activities modelled in our study encompassed activities such as running, cycling, or inclined walking, and could include both structured, intentional exercise, and incidental daily activities such as running for a bus or climbing stairs," the authors wrote.

SOURCE:

Conducted by the international ProPASS Consortium, the study appeared in Circulation.

LIMITATIONS:

Causation not established. Sleep quality was not measured. Sample was not ethnically or racially diverse. Duration of bouts of exercise was not considered, only the daily average.