Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure

sydney.edu.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 189 posts

Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure

#141

Post by fouc »

renegade-otter wrote: post #102
kbelder wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had similar results with blood pressure, although a smaller weight loss (about 30 lbs) and smaller decrease. Another 10-20 pounds to go. For what it's worth, I'm on a intermittent fast. I only eat between 5pm to 10pm, with no real restrictions on what I eat. I was surprised how quickly weight fell away, and how easy a diet it was to stick to. 'Eat after work' was a simple behavior to adapt to. People are very in…

Isn't that an extreme version of IF? I think the usual window is 8 hours, so people should first try eating between lunch and dinner, say 12PM-8PM. A lot of people eat breakfast out of habit, and I found that once I got older, I just stopped needing it. It made me bloated and sluggish. You just don't need that many calories per day when you stop growing or not working in construction.

IF typically starts at 16/8 but 20/4 or 23/1 (One meal a day) variations seem pretty common too. A 5 hour window is not bad because that still gives room to get in 2 meals.

Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure

#142

Post by ninalanyon »

physicles wrote: post #48
outworlder wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I personally do not. I was about to be put in blood pressure medication. Then I started a gym, with a trainer. I noticed that, after the exercise, blood pressure would immediately drop and stay low for a few hours. Over time, the amount of time it spent lower than average increased, and it got lower and lower. It crossed 24h. Now? I can go to the gym Mon/Wed/Fri and it will remain low at all times. I did stop f…

That’s amazing. How did you regularly monitor your blood pressure?

I would guess that they did it using a blood pressure meter. That's how I do mine. They are cheap and reasonably accurate. Mine is from Omron, very similar to the one my doctor uses.

Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure

#143

Post by fouc »

whazor wrote: post #129
fouc wrote: post #26

FYI, the absolute fastest way to lower blood pressure is to lose weight if you are obese. Rule of thumb is that your systolic blood pressure will drop by 1 mmHg per 1 lb of weight loss, eventually slowing down to 1 mmHg per 2 lbs of weight loss as you get back down to more normal blood pressure range / weight range. Source: went from 160/110 to 120/90 in several months by dropping 60 lbs.

Achieving five minutes of daily exercise is easier than dropping 60 lbs. Nice work though

I relied heavily on extended water fasting (3-7 day fasts). It's both easy and hard, easy in the sense it doesn't take any extra work to lose weight, but hard in terms of dealing with cravings/discomfort.

Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure

#144

Post by ninalanyon »

HuwFulcher wrote: post #123
yndoendo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until society has better work-life balance to allow for exercise while allowing for cost effect doctor visit to assign supportive and recognized improvement. Cheerleaders are more useful then people think.

This is a big problem in the UK I think. The idea of having a regular checkup with a doctor is unheard of and will get you some weird looks if you ask for it. The NHS doesn't seem (as an outsider looking in) to do well with preventative care. I firmly believe (without necessarily a lot of evidence) that if we focused more on healthy lifestyles and made them more cost effective for people the amount of money we plough…

I suspect that regular check-ups for most people would simply regularly confirm what they already know: they need to lose weight, stop smoking, take more exercise, eat more fruit and veg.

The UK now has a sugar tax on soft drinks that seems to be having a measurable positive effect. Whether it is a meaningful effect remains to be seen though:

"The findings suggest that a year after the sugar tax was introduced, adults reduced their daily free sugar intake by about 10.9g, and a reduction in soft drinks accounted for over half of this reduction. This translates to a reduction of around 40 calories daily, which if maintained, and assuming no other changes, could lead to 1.5kg weight loss over a year."

https://theconversation.com/how-do-we-know-the-uks-sugar-tax...

So perhaps instead of exhorting people to do better the state should continue to try to make bad habits more expensive and good habits cheaper.

Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure

#145

Post by HuwFulcher »

ninalanyon wrote: post #144
HuwFulcher wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a big problem in the UK I think. The idea of having a regular checkup with a doctor is unheard of and will get you some weird looks if you ask for it. The NHS doesn't seem (as an outsider looking in) to do well with preventative care. I firmly believe (without necessarily a lot of evidence) that if we focused more on healthy lifestyles and made them more cost effective for people the amount of money we plough…

I suspect that regular check-ups for most people would simply regularly confirm what they already know: they need to lose weight, stop smoking, take more exercise, eat more fruit and veg. The UK now has a sugar tax on soft drinks that seems to be having a measurable positive effect. Whether it is a meaningful effect remains to be seen though: "The findings suggest that a year after the sugar tax was introduced, adult…

Yes a regular check-up wouldn't be the silver bullet but it would help expose larger problems under the surface which could be prevented with prescribed exercise, diet, etc.

Ultimately it's down to the patient to put in the work but if the NHS focused more on creating community practices where these things could be more widely available then maybe we should see more meaningful change.

Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure

#146

Post by petercooper »

hunter-gatherer wrote: post #136
petercooper wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder how many people do not take care of the basics and instead go for anti-depressants and Ozempic. Bear in mind that for many people therapies like SSRIs and weight loss medications (or even counselling/therapy) can get them into the right mental and physical place to start doing more exercise and eat better. It's easy to advise people to eat well and exercise, but it can be a bit like telling a miserable pe…

I've never suffered from a mental illness, so I'm genuinely curious; is exercise not ever used as a prescription for depression? Physical therapy is a thing, so it can be a prescription in some cases, no?

Oh, it absolutely is, and from what I've read, it can work really well! It's just not necessarily a 'one size fits all' which is what makes medicine complicated and good doctors valuable.

If someone's hit the point where they're thinking "I'd rather be dead than leave the house", improving their mental health by any means necessary should be the first step. But not everyone should be given pills as the first option and many doctors are guilty of such laziness (over prescription of opioids and antibiotics are other examples of this – some patients urgently need them, most don't).

Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure

#147

Post by prirun »

mancerayder wrote: post #62
warner25 wrote: post #10

Tabata et al.[1] found in the mid-1990s that just 2-4 minutes of "high-intensity intermittent training may improve both anaerobic and aerobic energy supplying systems significantly." This was popularized as "Tabata training" 20+ years ago. I generally believe that brief bouts of exercise can be very beneficial, especially because they're easier to do consistently over the long-term vs. more time-consuming routines. F…

Tabata makes you want to vomit if you don't have at least a moderate level of fitness. Even if it's great conditioning. So here's the problem. We go on about what's optimal from a raw time perspective, but time slows subjectively when you suffer. So people who don't conceptualize themselves as athletic, they may have insecurities if not outright skepticism, aren't going to last. You can make a culty cultural glue to…

> So people who don't conceptualize themselves as athletic, they may have insecurities if not outright skepticism, aren't going to last

I have always been thin and tried to start workouts on my own several times over many years, and never could do it, mostly because I didn't know what I was doing. Hiring a personal trainer, if you can afford it, is a great way to get over this hump. I quit after a couple of years and workout on my own now, but couldn't have done it without the trainer.

Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure

#148

Post by toofy »

renegade-otter wrote: post #113
mr_mitm wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really downplays the impact of clinical depression. It's often not solved by exercising alone, and if you talk to a psychologist about this, the first thing they do is recommend exercising or at least goeing for walks as an immediate measure before potentially therapy or medication starts. When I went to a doctor complaining about low energy, literally the first question was about weight gain and exercising, so…

My comment comes from the seeming ease of procuring these drugs - with people going on Ozempic out of pure vanity.

you did end your comment with:

> The doctors rarely tell you to eat your salads. "Here is a pill, thank you for your business"

which makes it appear as even with your “self-diagnoses” you’re under the impression that doctors rarely ask about exercise and diet and then move forward from there. which is the exact opposite of what i’ve seen from a college roommate, a close friend, and an ex who saw multiple different doctors, and each of those doctors first insisted on:

a) find a hobby, dive into it. and,

b) exercise multiple times per week. and,

c) get a nutritionist. and

d) only after those things showed little results would they prescribe SSRIs or other long term drugs.

i promise this isn’t coming down on you, i promise, but, we seem to have a massive trend of confidently wrong people implying they’re smarter than actual doctors or (just about any other subject it seems), they just guess what doctors do and don’t do. and even far more concerning is how often these confidently wrong people issue blanket advice to randoms online as if they’re at all qualified and as if they know any of the important intricate details of the randoms they’re advising.

we desperately need to get back to a place where people can confidently say “i don’t know” again. we’re (including myself) too desperate to chime in even if we’re woefully ill equipped.

maybe every secondary-university semester everyone should get a refresher session on the most basic ass socrates/plato: the smartest person is the one who knows, understands, and admits about how much they are ignorant.

Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure

#149

Post by meiraleal »

fsckboy wrote: post #47

the research metric I'm interested in is "if you exercise for 5 minutes, you should expect to live 1 minute longer" and I would look at that and say "so I lost 4 mins? no thanks" but if it ever comes out with a surplus, I'll turn on a dime (and turning on a dime for 5 minutes a day probably lowers blood pressure)

it would be more like: if you exercise for 5 minutes, you should expect to live 1 day longer

Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure

#150

Post by taeric »

petercooper wrote: post #134
taeric wrote: post #22

This could get far more mileage with people by saying "activity" instead of "exercise." It is amazing how much people can get out of a simple walk around the house. Make it out and around the neighborhood, and you start getting absurdly good results.

Agreed. I've always struggled with intense structured exercise. Instead I walk quickly, park at the far end of lots, run up the stairs instead of the elevator, do some jumping jacks while waiting for the microwave, and lots of small things like that and it seems to work. You can get a lot of exercise minutes and increased heart rate out of doing routine activities with gusto. Admittedly, it's not so good for building…

You only need a 20ish pound set of weights to build muscle, oddly. Don't even have to spend a ton of time on it. Can do a basic set of curls/whatever while cooking breakfast.

Body weight exercises feel like they should be even easier to do, but realistically are a lot harder. Pushups, are free and can be done anywhere, sure; but are not a place to start at.

Post reply on HN