Blood pressure problems? I have some ideas for you. If you’re a movement professional, one of the most important things that you can do is to keep people healthy over time. And if we look at the morbidity, mortality statistics around the world, we know that hypertension plays a huge role in all vascular diseases. So people with high blood pressure are at increased cardiovascular risk. They are at increased risk for retinal issues. They are at increased risk for kidney problems. And the list just goes on and on and on. So hypertension by itself is a disease, but it can make everything worse.
Now, here’s what your doctor often won’t tell you, maybe because they don’t even know it. The fact is that small changes in blood pressure can equate to huge reductions in risk. In fact, the research looks like this.
So let’s make sure we understand a couple of things. Your top number is your systolic blood pressure. Your bottom number is diastolic. So in most cases, what we’re looking at is trying to lower the systolic number, the big number at the top. What is now currently showing up in the research literature is this. If we can lower that top number by five points, five millimeters of mercury, that’s the official designation, that typically equates to a 10% reduction in overall risk. So if I can lower it by five points, you’re 10% less likely to potentially have a stroke or to potentially have cardiovascular problems. If I can lower it by 10 points, I’m now going up to 20% reduction. So you can just do simple math. So small changes have huge results.
So how do we go after this from a drug-free exercise-based perspective? I’m holding these things, I’ll explain in just a minute. But most people, whenever they are thinking about reducing blood pressure through movement, our default narrative is you need to do more cardiovascular exercise. Get on an exercise bike, get on a rowing machine, take walks every day, go for a run. And there is ample evidence that cardiovascular exercise and strength training both can reduce blood pressure, but that requires a pretty significant time investment. And for some people, because they have other issues like pain and inner ear problems and eye problems, it actually is impossible for them to do enough high quality cardiovascular exercise or very difficult to the point that they don’t do it. So while those are great tools, we’re always looking for something that may be more effective. And what I’m going to talk with you about today are the three things that we’re seeing in the research literature that can promote really significant drops in those systolic numbers.
Now, before I go into that, if you are a movement professional specifically interested in bridging the gap between biomechanics and neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, please contact us. Go to the pinned comment, drop us a DM on Instagram, drop us an email, because we’d love to share our approach with bringing brain-based training into what it is that you do.
Now, to get back to this, I’m not going to go into the neurology behind it right now, but I’m going to talk to you about the three approaches that we’re seeing in the literature that are profoundly effective in reducing that big systolic number.
The first we’re going to talk about is inspiratory muscle strength training. The reason I’m starting with this one is this is currently the biggest winner. Inspiratory muscle strength training does require a device. Now, this device that I am using, this is called the Breather. There are other ones that are out there. What I like about it is it’s going to allow me to use this dial to decide how much resistance I want when I am breathing through it. So I’m going to inhale. I’m right now on a number two. It goes up to a number five. Now, the reason this is important is that the protocols that have shown to drop that big systolic number by up to 15 points over eight weeks is inspiratory muscle strength training, but it has to be done at a high enough intensity.
So when we look at the protocols, the basic protocol is this. You’re going to start off. You’re going to get a breather or you’re going to get some kind of other inspiratory muscle strength training device. You’re going to test yourself. You’re trying to figure out what is 55 to 75% of the most difficult inhale that you can perform. So I’m going to grab this. I’m going to have it on a two. I think, okay, that’s pretty comfortable. I go to a three. That’s getting harder. I go to a four. That’s much harder. So for me right now, as I’m standing here, I would think probably a three is about 75% of what I’m able to do as far as my maximal inhalation.
Now, once I have that number, and again, if that’s too hard for you, you can go lower because you are now going to do 30 inhalations in a row, right? You’ll breathe in nice and hard and fast. Ideally within one to two seconds, and then you do a comfortable exhale. And then you do that again, but it’s 30 breaths at around 55 to 75% intensity. And you do that five to seven days a week. Now, when you do that five to seven days a week, over the next four, six and eight weeks, you’re going to see your systolic numbers dropping and dropping and dropping, unless you have something else going on.
Again, right now, from a drug-free perspective, this seems to outperform everything else that we know. Cardiovascular exercise, everything else I’m going to go through. So I did not want to start with anything, but the number one winner right now in the current reviews. Number two, we’re going to go to isometric exercise. For years, actually since around 1985, we’ve been talking about using hand grip exercises to lower blood pressure. What happens is whenever I do a hand grip exercise and I hold a contraction for a prolonged period of time, I actually raise my blood pressure. And as I’m raising my blood pressure and I’m causing a congestion in this arm, the working side, what happens is that’s triggering off what are called baroreflexes within the body. And these are monitoring our blood pressure.
So when our blood pressure goes up because I’m doing this, that’s then going to talk to my brainstem. It’s going to say, hey, blood pressure is going up, let’s lower it. So then as soon as I release this, all of a sudden blood vessels are going to dilate and my blood pressure will drop. If I do that enough, I change the brain through plasticity to lower blood pressure. So what we have seen consistently in the research literature is that we can use isometric exercises, either hand grip or like wall sits where I’m doing isometric exercises for prolonged periods sitting against a wall. We can lower that top number by around nine points over four to six weeks.
So if I was going to do this with a hand gripper, you need to be gripping around 30% of your maximum. So I have this set right now, so I can start off with a test and I can just give it a quick squeeze. And I hit about 120. So I would do 30% of 120. So I need to now reset this and I’m going to try and hold it at around 36 pounds. Now, once I get it to that 36 pounds, I’m going hold for two minutes. And after two minutes, I’m going to relax for two minutes. And I’m going to do it again for two more minutes. And then I’m going to switch hands and I’ll do two more rounds over here. So I’m going to do a total of four, two minute holds. And I like to do two on my right hand, two on my left hand. You’re going to do that three times a week.
So the breathing every day, isometrics three times a week. If we do the three times a week, all of a sudden again, over four to six weeks, we’re going to start to see that systolic number come down. And some studies show it coming down in week one.
So we now have our two kind of favorite approaches where we can use the inspiratory muscle strength training, or we can use isometric exercises. The last thing is equipment free. All you have to do is breathe, but breathe in a specific way.
Whenever we’re looking to lower blood pressure and calm the body, we want to focus on six breaths per minute, right? That’s a slow breathing rate. It’s called slow pace breathing. And when you do slow pace breathing, you want to emphasize the exhale.
So what we have seen in the literature is this. If I practice 10 minutes per day of slow pace breathing, aiming for six breaths per minute, I can lower that top number between three and five points. So it’s the least effective because it’s not as intense as either the muscle strength training or the isometrics, but it still works. And it has the additive benefit of relaxing you throughout the day. So the way that we teach people to do this is you inhale through your nose for two seconds, you hold for two seconds, and then you exhale either through your nose or through your mouth for six seconds. You put it on a timer and you do that for 10 minutes. At the end of that, you’re going to feel much more relaxed. And if you take your blood pressure before and after, you probably are going to see it drop. Over time, we’re retraining your nervous system to say, hey, we don’t have to maintain this high level of blood pressure all the time. We can relax a little bit.
So there you have it. You have three tools. Now what we do, because we are brain-based practitioners, if someone really needs a lot of blood pressure control is we stack them together. They’re doing this every day. They’re doing the slow pace breathing every day. And they’re doing isometrics three times a week. And we have seen ridiculous improvements in blood pressure in a lot of our clients that do this.
So one big caveat here is as you begin applying all this, make sure this is done in conjunction with your client’s healthcare providers who are currently dealing with any hypertension issues that they have. Because if you really start lowering their blood pressure and they’re on medication, guess what? Medication dosages may need to be modified as they improve. So don’t forget that. It’s super important both for you and ethically for your client. All right?
So if again, you’re interested in brain-based training and bridging the gap between what you’re currently doing with biomechanics or kind of traditional approaches, you’d like to know more about how to blend neuroscience and what you do, make sure to contact us because we’d love to share it with you. And if you just want a lot of free info, subscribe to the channel. We look forward to talking with you again soon.
