Cardio-respiratory exercise can reduce sudden blood pressure hikes in aging men, a new research states.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed out various key points related to heart ailments in the United States. It stated that one in every four deaths in America is due heart disease, which is the leading cause of death for both men and women.
The report further states that around 720,000 Americans have a heart attack in a year and of these, 515,000 are a first heart attack and 205,000 happen in people who have already had a heart attack.
The current study was based on the examination of 13,953 men aged between 20 and 90 from the time period of 1970 through to 2006. During the start of the study, the participants did not have high blood pressure (hypertension), heart disease and cancer.
The researchers collected data on the men's naturally-occurring systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) hypertension from the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study. The participants had to complete three to 28 follow-up examinations and their fitness levels were determined based on their performance on a treadmill exercise stress test.
Researchers noted that for men in general, SBP levels increased to prehypertension levels at around the age of 46 while DBP levels started to increase at the age of 42. At the end of the study, the researchers found that men who had higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness delayed the start of rising SBP levels to the age of 54. For these fit men, their levels of DBP did not reach prehypertension levels until around 90-years-old. These delays in rising blood pressure were independent of the men's body fat percentage.
"Since regular physical activity is the primary and most modifiable determinant of fitness level, our results underscore the importance for a man to increase his regular physical activity to prevent his natural, aging-related rise in blood pressure," said study co-author Junxiu Liu, M.D., PhD candidate, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.
"Also interesting to note is that when we examined the percentage of body fat data, the systolic and diastolic numbers were not significantly changed These results support our hypothesis that a man's age-related blood pressure rise was independent of his percentage of body fat," Sui said.
The study was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
