Why sitting lowers Blood Pressure sometimes

You’ve been told that sitting is bad for your blood pressure. Stand up, move around, get your heart pumping… right?

Wrong, says a new study in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

Sometimes, sitting for a long period (hours and hours) lowers your blood pressure, while standing raises it.

The trick is knowing when to sit and stand to optimize your blood pressure.

We know regular exercise improves cardiovascular health and lowers blood pressure. But what about activities during work hours?

To answer this, researchers studied 156 aging workers, averaging 62. Using accelerometers to track physical activity and portable blood pressure monitors, they analyzed the relationship between work behaviors and blood pressure.

The findings were eye-opening:

• Sitting Benefits Blood Pressure: Workers who sat more during work hours had lower nighttime diastolic blood pressure. Nighttime diastolic pressure dropped by nearly 1 mmHg for every extra hour of sitting.
• Standing Increases Pressure: Standing for long periods raises daytime diastolic blood pressure. Each additional hour of standing increased it by 1.34 mmHg.
• Light Activity Disrupts Nighttime Pressure: Light physical activity at work reduces the normal nighttime blood pressure dip. Each extra minute of light activity cut the overnight dip by 3.57%.
• Vigorous Exercise Didn’t Matter: Whether at work or during leisure, vigorous physical activity didn’t significantly impact 24-hour blood pressure.

What does this mean for you?

If you’re an aging worker, prolonged sitting at work might benefit your blood pressure.

On the flip side, standing for hours or doing light activity during work could raise it.

Why?

Standing requires your heart to work harder to pump blood back from your legs, increasing blood pressure.

But don’t misinterpret this as a call to ditch exercise. Regular exercise outside of work hours remains critical for your overall health.

What’s important is what kind of exercise you do (during work or leisure).

Everyone will tell you to do strenuous exercises to tackle your blood pressure, right? Wrong! It’s the worst (the study said it). The best approach is almost effortless, takes as little as nine minutes and hundreds of readers vouch for it…