Nearly 80% of older individuals suffer from hypertension. Maintaining healthy blood pressure levels can protect against serious conditions like strokes, heart attacks and heart failure.

A pilot study demonstrated that even just increasing activity to about 3,000 steps per day can significantly lower blood pressure.

This study sought to investigate whether older individuals with high blood pressure could achieve these benefits through increasing their daily walking, which is one of the easiest and most popular forms of physical activity for any individual.

Walking is an effortless and accessible form of physical exercise that doesn’t require special equipment – you can do it just about anytime, anyplace or at any place!

Research focused on an inactive older population aged 68-78 years who, before beginning this research, were taking approximately 4,000 steps a day on average.

Based on recent research, it was decided that an appropriate goal should be an increase of 3,000 steps per week; this amount provides enough health benefits without being too difficult to attain.

According to the American College of Sports Medicine’s advice, this would put most individuals on track for a daily average step goal of 7,000 steps per day.

This study was carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic, so all procedures needed to be conducted remotely.

All participants received a kit containing blood pressure monitors, pedometers, and step diaries in order to keep track of how many steps they were walking each day.

After increasing daily steps by 25%, both systolic and diastolic blood pressures decreased on average by 7 and 4 points respectively.

Research suggests that blood pressure reductions such as those seen here correlate to a decrease of 16% cardiovascular mortality risk, 11% overall mortality risk reduction, 18% heart disease risk decrease and 36% stroke risk decrease.

Remarkably, lifestyle therapies can often prove just as effective as medications and structured exercise programs.

Results show that the 7,000-step program completed by participants of this study is comparable to antihypertensive medications in terms of its ability to reduce blood pressure.

Out of 21 participants, 8 were already taking anti-hypertensive medication; nevertheless, these individuals still experienced decreases in their systolic blood pressure from increasing physical activity every day.

Researchers discovered in an earlier study that exercise combined with medications improved their efficacy; it demonstrated exercise’s value as an anti-hypertensive treatment strategy without completely negating their effects. Exercise simply provided part of their treatment strategy plan.

Researchers noted that walking continuously in short bursts with varied walking speeds did not produce as many steps than increasing total steps taken.

Researchers discovered that physical activity volume, not intensity, was most influential. Setting volume as an overall goal will bring health advantages.