How can isometric exercises help with high blood pressure?

Question

Hello doctor,

I am concerned about my father’s health. He has been dealing with high blood pressure for the past three years and is not able to recover or normalize his blood pressure. He has been taking Metoprolol. I am worried about the potential complications of BP, and I want to do everything I can to improve his health. I have heard about isometric exercises being beneficial for managing hypertension. Can you please tell me more about isometric exercises and how they might help with high blood pressure? Are there specific exercises he should be doing or any precautions he needs to take?

Please help.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Hello,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

With isometric exercises, you are contracting a set of muscles without moving your joints or limbs. Wall sits, where you hold yourself in a seated position with your back against a wall, and planks, where you hold what looks like a push-up position, are fairly common isometric exercises. But those can be difficult for people with pre-existing orthopedic conditions.

There are options like knee extensions, where you straighten your leg and hold that position while squeezing your thigh muscle. You will still get an intense isometric exercise, but it is less rigorous on the body. For people interested in engaging in isometric exercises, I recommend beginning with something like holding a position for 10 to 20 seconds and doing that two times with a two to three-minute break in between. As your body becomes conditioned to this, you can increase to 20 to 30-second holds and do three repetitions.

The key is to increase slowly as you feel stronger so you do not overdo it and hurt yourself. When you squeeze the muscle and contract it, the idea is that you are squeezing blood into the muscle to help promote flow. Then, in turn, you are also helped by the pumping of your blood, which strengthens your heart in ways that are similar to traditional exercise like running. As the heart gets stronger, it’s able to pump blood more efficiently, which can decrease your blood pressure.

I hope this helps.

Thank you.