A recent study discovered a specific danger of blood pressure that is not a stroke or heart attack, but could be even deadlier.

It appears as if high blood pressure affects your ability to engage safely in an activity that you practice every day and on which your independence and productivity depend.

If this is proven, it will change your daily routine and independence by a lot.

An interesting study by the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Utah School of Medicine and published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine shed some light on the reasons why truck drivers crash.

The researchers questioned and tested almost 800 truck drivers at truck stops and truck shows in Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Nevada, Texas, and Utah because they wanted to ascertain why long haul truck driving was such a dangerous profession.

Unsurprisingly, those who use their cell phones and/or are overworked and fatigued are most likely to crash. The more interesting finding was that drivers who had a high pulse pressure, were more likely to have accidents than those with normal pulse pressures.

Pulse pressure is the difference between your systolic and diastolic readings on a blood pressure test. In other words, if your pulse pressure is 40 mm Hg, as it would be if your blood pressure reading is the recommended 120/80 mm Hg, then your pulse pressure is good. If you have high blood pressure, your systolic pressure usually increases far more than your diastolic pressure and your pulse pressure number increases along with it.

High pulse pressure is considered to be a grave health problem if it passes 60 (as in 160/100, for example).

The most common and serious cause of high pulse pressure is stiffness of your aorta, your primary artery that transports oxygenated blood from your heart to the rest of your body. Leaky heart valves can also cause it. In this way, it is a serious indication of cardiovascular disease and/or poor heart function. The concern, accordingly, is not that high blood pressure on its own causes traffic accidents, but that cardiovascular disease might.

This does not mean that people with high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease should be prohibited from driving. That’s like suggesting that men should be pulled off the roads because they have more accidents than women do. The increased risk is not so high that it justifies drastic measures of that kind.

In fact, the difference in risk between those with and without cardiovascular disease is so small that researchers are still trying to work out what it means. But it’s still something to pay attention to.

So to keep hearts and roads safe, I recommend you do these 3 easy exercises that will bring your blood pressure below 120/80 – in as little as 9 minutes…