People with family history of high blood pressure can reduce their risk of developing the same by brisk walking for two and half hours a week. New study found that even moderate workout can diminish the risk of hypertension in people with family history by twenty-six percent.
In a study researchers from the University of South Carolina in US, followed a cluster of sixty-three hundred adults aged twenty to eighty for the period of five years with thirty-three percent of adults having a family history of hypertension. When the study started all participants were healthy and reported no diagnosis of hypertension.
All the study participants’ achieved an exercise test score of as a minimum eighty-five percent of their age-predicted heart rate. Besides, cardiorespiratory fitness with the help of a treadmill exercise test was also found out of all study volunteers. During the study, more than fifteen participants reported that they had developed hypertension.
The study findings showed that participants with low levels of fitness and a family history of hypertension had seventy percent higher risk of developing the disease, in comparison to those with high level of fitness and no parental history of hypertension. Participants with high level of fitness and a parental history of hypertension experienced only a sixteen percent higher risk of developing the disease.
In contrast participants who were fit and had no parental history had lower risk. Overall, study showed that people with and without a parental history of hypertension, higher level of fitness were associated with forty-two percent lower risk of developing the disease. The study findings were published in Hypertension.
Lead author Prof Robin Shook, stated understanding the roles that family history and fitness play in chronic diseases is critically important. The results of this study send a very practical message that even a very realistic, moderate amount of exercise, described as brisk walking for two and half hour per week can provide a huge health benefit, particularly to people predisposed to hypertension because of their family history.