Reduce blood pressure with this one simple lifestyle change: study

Health

By Brooke Kato

Trying to get your blood pressure down? Sit a little bit less every day and you could see surprising results, experts say.

New research reveals that living an even slightly less sedentary lifestyle could do wonders for your health.

Americans spend nearly one-third of their day sitting — a statistic said to be closely linked to adverse health outcomes.

Some studies have concluded that “mini movements” throughout the day can offset the ill effects of sitting all day, while others report that just 22 minutes of daily exercise could be the key to balance the impacts of prolonged sitting.

This new study, however, has found another way to reduce risk — shave just 30 minutes off your daily sitting time.

Published in the JAMA Open Network last month, the study observed 283 older adults aged 60 to 89 who were divided into two groups, intervention and control.

The control group attended 10 sessions with a health coach to set goals for healthier living that excluded exercise or sedentary habits.

Meanwhile, the intervention group was treated according to I-STAND methods: they attended 10 sessions of health coaching, set goals to reduce sitting and received a standing desk and fitness tracker that reminded them to take breaks during prolonged sitting.

The research team found that the sitting intervention methods were “effective at reducing sitting time by more than a half-hour per day” and increased time spent standing during the 6 months of observation.

On average, the intervention group reduced the daily time spent sedentary by about 32 minutes, while the control group did not experience any changes to the amount of sitting.

The results, however, did not meet the researchers’ goals of reducing sitting by 2 hours per day, although the secondary outcome — that the intervention group’s blood pressure was reduced — suggested that even smaller changes to habits could improve cardiovascular health.

The researchers attributed the notable difference in blood pressure to recruiting “participants at high risk of hypertension and aimed to reduce sitting time as well as decrease prolonged sitting,” the study authors wrote.

They suggested that, in populations with a higher risk for cardiovascular disease and related health outcomes, “small changes in sitting patterns were sufficient for improving” their blood pressure.