Low-intensity walking as mild medication for pressure control in prehypertensive and hypertensive subjects: how far shall we wander?

摘要

Successful prevention and treatment of hypertension depend on the appropriate combination of antihypertensive drug therapy and nondrug lifestyle modification.While most hypertension guidelines recommend moderate-to high-intensity exercise,we decided to explore a mild yet effective type of exercise to add to hypertension management,especially in populations with complications or frailty.After comparing the short-term cardiovascular effects of low-speed walking versus high-speed walking for 3 kilometers (km) (3 km/h versus 6 km/h) in young,healthy volunteers,we delivered low-speed walking (low-intensity walking,2.5 metabolic equivalents of task,METs) as exercise therapy in 42 prehypertensive and 43 hypertensive subjects.We found that one session of 3 km low-intensity walking exerted a transient pressure-lowering effect as well as a mild negative chronotropic effect on heart rate in both the prehypertensive and hypertensive subjects;these short-term benefits on blood pressure and heart rate were accompanied by a brief increase in urine 3-endorphin output.Then we prescribed regular low-intensity walking with a target exercise dose (exercise volume) of 500-1000 METs·min/week (50-60 min/day and 5-7 times/week) in hypertensive subjects in addition to their daily activities.Regular low-intensity walking also showed mild but significant blood pressure-lowering and heart rate-reducing effects in 7 hypertensive subjects within two months.It is hypothesized that regular low-intensity exercise of the necessary dose could be taken as a pragmatic and supplementary medication for hypertension management.