5 Ways to Lower Blood Pressure Without Pills! (Ages 50+)

In this episode, Farnham’s leading over-50’s physiotherapist, Will Harlow, reveals 5 scientifically proven ways to drop blood pressure by 20 points or more without pills!

Study quoted is here: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2023/07/02/bjsports-2022-106503

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It’s possible to drop your blood pressure significantly without taking pills and in this video I’m going to show you five proven ways to do so if you don’t know who I am my name is will harow and I’m the over 50s specialist physio here at HT physio INF farum and

Today I’m going to be showing you five proven ways to drop your blood pressure by 20 points or more now high blood pressure is a really dangerous thing it’s incredibly common especially in the western world and it’s associated with a higher risk of stroke a higher risk of

Cardiovascular disease and it can also lead to problems like kidney disease and even Alzheimer’s all of these things have been shown to be more likely for people with high blood pressure now if you go to your GP with high blood pressure which you should do by the way

They might suggest that you go on to medication and if you’ve been told you need medication then definitely go with the advice of your doctor but for many people it’s possible to drop their blood pressure so significantly that eventually they no longer need medication ation just through natural

Means so in today’s video I’m going to give you five proven ways the first thing to note is these exercises and these pieces of advice are not suitable for everyone they’re definitely not designed to replace the advice you got from your doctor so don’t do anything without checking with your doctor first

And avoid any of the exercises that cause you pain so let’s have a talk about some of the ways that are proven to help over 50s reduce their blood pressure so the first way that’s been proven to help people over 50 to reduce their blood pressure is to take brisk

Walks now when I’m telling people to take brisk walks what I usually recommend people start with is three brisk walks of about 10 to 15 minutes duration per day now the reason we say brisk is because walking faster increases the heart rate more and it seems to be better for reducing blood

Pressure over the long term than taking one very long very slow walk so i’ much much rather someone did three brisk 15minute walks than one very long 1 hour walk at a slower Pace it just seems to be better for cardiovascular fitness and has a better effect on blood pressure

And the second way to improve your blood pressure and to improve your health overall is to do 30 minutes of stationary cycling each day now I love the exercise bike for most people it’s such a good way to increase the heart rate and to get the lungs working it

Makes your cardiovascular system more efficient and it will help you reduce body weight as well if you’re overweight that can contribute to high blood pressure too so by going on the stationary bike for 30 minutes in the morning you’re going to increase your heart rate you’re going to get the lungs

Working you’re going to lose some excess weight and your blood pressure should come down over time too so those are two bits of general advice but I also have some specific exercises to show you now so let’s have a look at some more proven ways to reduce blood pressure by 20

Points or more so one of the proven best ways to improve your blood pressure is to do isometric exercise in a recent meta analysis done by the British Journal of sports medicine researchers found that to their surprise isometric exercise was Superior to any other form of exercise for reducing blood pressure

An isometric exercise is basically any muscle contraction where you’re Contracting the muscle but no movement is happening so this is an isometric contraction of my bicep so I’m pushing up this hand is pushing down no movements happening but the muscles still activating so it seems that that

Seems to be the best way to reduce blood pressure for many people and there is one exercise which is an isometric exercise in those studies that seem to be most effective and they call it the wall sit so to do the wall sit is really

Simple all you need is a wall and you’re going to sit against it like this with your feet probably about 18 in away from the wall now I’m going to do this in socks but I’d recommend people do this in shoes just so they don’t slip like

This and the wall sit is nice for most people because you can vary how high you go depending on how comfortable your knees are so the exercise is just like this you’re just going to come down on the wall until you find a comfortable position where you can feel your thigh

Muscles working but your knees are not in pain and then you’re just going to hold it and in the studies that were done in that metaanalysis it was shown that about 2 minutes of a contraction is optimal now when you get into this position you’ll soon realize that 2

Minutes is a very long time so don’t go so deep that it starts to get really sore find a position that you can comfortably hold for 2 minutes but what we want to find is by the end of the 2 minutes it’s quite difficult so you should be feeling like you’re shaking a

Little bit by the end of the 2 minutes but not so much that you’re about to collapse on the floor and and if you can do that a couple of times a day it’s going to be fantastic for controlling blood pressure now there’s one very important point with isometric exercises

Because we’re holding everything still there’s a temptation to hold your breath as well and that’s actually really bad for blood pressure it will increase your blood pressure so what we want to make sure is even though we’re holding the muscle contraction we’re still breathing smoothly throughout the set okay so not

Over breathing but just making sure we’re not holding our breath we’re just holding the muscle contraction so the next type of exercise that’s shown to be really effective for reducing blood pressure is resistance exercise and again this is something that many people are surprised by they think I’ve got

High blood pressure I shouldn’t be straining to lift heavy weights and to a certain extent that’s true but you don’t have to pick up really heavy weights to make resistance training effective all I’ve got here is a light band and I’m going to show you how to do a an

Effective resistance workout without heavy weights so the key for this is we’re going to be working our muscle groups to the point of fatigue but again we’re going to make sure we’re breathing throughout the movement we’re not holding our breath and we’re not working to the point where we feel like we’ve

Got a vein in our head that’s about to burst but we are going to be working the muscles to the point where they feel tired now one important thing for blood pressure workouts is we want to try and avoid changing positions too much so we don’t want to be doing things like

Getting up and down from the floor lots of times just because that can cause dizziness so I’m going to show you three exercises that you can do from standing with a band so the first thing we’re going to do is just going to drape the band on the floor and stand on the

Middle of it with about equal tension in each hand I’m going to show you an exercise called the curl and press so the curl and press looks like this you bring it up like this then you’re going to come out and then up over the head

And back down in and down and this this is a lovely exercise for working the arms and the shoulders it gets both sides of the arm it gets the bicep and the tricep and it also gets the deltoids and the rotator cuff working it’s a really nice exercise for people who

Don’t do tons of resistance training but they just want to get an all over compound workout for the arms and it’s good for people with blood pressure problems because you don’t have to get up and down from the floor so once you’ve done a set of 10 or 12 of those

We’re going to move on to the next exercise and I call this the standing press again we’re going to stand with the band in the same position you’re going to bring it up like this and we’re going to push out in front of us keeping our tummy tight and the buttock squeezed

Together and then back in like this so you’ll feel this is an interesting exercise because even though it looks like it’s a chest movement it’s actually more of a shoulder exercise so I can feel the front of of my shoulders working quite hard and they’re working

Hard to keep my arms extended in front of me as I extend the elbows now you also have to work your back and your core to keep everything still so this is a nice exercise which gives you isometric exercise here in your core which has again been shown to be very

Very effective so once you’ve done a set of 10 or 12 of those you can go straight on to doing a set of lateral raises and this is another great standing exercise it does involve having to bend or twist or do anything that might increase your blood pressure and equally we want to

Make sure that we’re breathing in and out now you might time your breathing the opposite way so you might time it and then out as you go up and in as you come down it doesn’t really matter as long as you pick a Tempo and you stick to it and a Tempo

That works well for you so that’s a nice little workout that you can do obviously those exercises are not the only ones there are lots of different band things you can do I’ve got loads more on my channel but that’s just something to get most people started and should help you

With your blood pressure and then the final form of exercise that can be great for reducing blood pressure is Yoga now it’s been shown that a combination of breathing control postural control and meditation is fantastic for reducing high blood pressure so I’m going to show

You an easy yoga routine that you can do from a chair obviously any yoga is pretty good for blood pressure as long as it’s comfortable for you to do so but this is just something to get you started so I’m going to show you my variation of a few different yoga poses

That can help you but it’s important that you also focus on relaxing as you do these movements they’re not going to be as effective if you’re doing the stretches you’re straining and you’re thinking about all of the things you’ve got to do for work at the same time we

Need to actually take the time to relax and allow the mind to settle so if you um find yourself um moving towards like a meditation app or something that can also be a useful thing let’s have a look at the routine now so we’re going to

Start off with what they call the the pigeon pose in yoga so we’re doing it from a chair so we’re going to sit up nice and tall in the chair with a relaxed posture as well and just bring one leg up towards you like this holding

On to your ankle as you support it on the opposite knee then you’re going to put your other hand just on top of that knee and rest it there the first thing we’re going to do is sit up nice and tall and already I can feel a stretch in

My hip and the reason I can feel it there is because I did a leg workout yesterday and they’re still quite tight from that now if you can it’s nice to just slightly Bend forward you can see I can’t get very far because of the tightness there at the moment but as you

Do so you want to try and breathe out and move closer towards your knee now some people will only be able to get to here that’s totally fine fine don’t strain the important thing is just to feel that gentle stretch and then to hold it making sure really important to breathe

And I recommend staying in these poses for at least 30 seconds maybe a minute because we’re working on both relaxation and stretching and then swapping over to the other side so you’re going to bring this leg up to here like this keep a nice good posture nice and relaxed you

Should already feel that stretch there hand on top sit up tall slight Lean Forward breathing out as you do so making sure to breathe throughout the movement so once you’ve held that for 30 to 60 seconds we’re going to move into the next pose and this is a variation of

The eagle pose certainly not the traditional eagle but it’s one that I’ve adapted so you’re going to this time keep your legs nice and tight and just cross one leg over the other like this so you should have your knees almost on top of each other again we’re going to

Sit tall and now we’re going to take both hands and just put them on that knee and just tug this knee gently across the body so we’re not pulling it we’re just rolling it in across the body until we get a bit of a stretch again in

The buttock but in a slightly different location so once you’ve got that pose in position going to Breathe In and Out allowing the whole body not just the hip to relax so we’re going to hold that for another 30 to 60 seconds before swapping sides so sitting tall bringing that leg right

Over that one almost wedging them together like this taking your hand over the top and just rolling this leg that way using both hands and again breathing gently I like to go in through the nose and then out through the mouth there’s some research by the way to show that a

Breath of 5.5 seconds in and 5.5 seconds out is one of the best breathing methods for both oxygenation of the body and relaxation so that means it’s probably really good for blood pressure as well so those are the first two poses then we’re going to move slightly higher up

And we’re going to work on the back before I show you this last pose it’s important to note 88% of people who watch these videos have not yet subscribed to the channel so if that’s you scroll down hit the Subscribe buttton it’s totally free but then

You’ll be the first to hear about our videos when they come out let’s look at this last pose now this is called the cat Cow and it’s a variation of a different exercise that people do on all fours but for this exercise you’re going to put both hands on your knees your

Feet are going to be flat on the floor and you’re going to start with a neutral upright posture the first thing we’re going to do is we’re just going to stretch so that our chest comes forward and we’re slightly arching our backs and then once we’ve held that position for

Five seconds we’re going to re reverse it and we’re going to stick the back out pull the chest in bring the head down and sink backwards into the cow then we’re going to come back up into the cat so we’re going to push the chest out forward pretending we’re a cat

That’s stretching in the morning with a nice straight arm and then we’re going to sink back into the cow position really rounding our back making sure to keep breathing so you might breathe in here and breathe out as you get to the top of the movement and then on the way down breathing

In and then out as you sink into the movement and just alternating between those two positions for a minute is a brilliant way to get an all over stretch for the upper and lower half of your body so hopefully that’s been really really useful that’s a great starting

Point for chair yoga but there’s lots of other exercises on my channel that can help you to improve your flexibility and similarly uh decrease your blood pressure as well so those are five proven ways to drop blood pressure by 20 points or more I hope that video has

Been useful if it has please do drop a comment below cuz I’d love to read your thoughts and if you want to get more from me you can pick up a copy of my book it’s called arriving Beyond 50 and you can find it on Amazon using the link

Below anyway thank you so much for watching I appreciate your time and I’ll speak to you on the next video