The Best Exercises to Lower Blood Pressure

High blood pressure makes your heart pump faster and harder than it needs to. As a result, your arteries will harden under the stress. This increased strain on your heart and arteries put you at severe risk of heart attack, stroke and diabetes. Medications are available to help lower your blood pressure but the best medication is simple exercise. Just 30 minutes a day can get your pressure back to normal and take the strain off your heart.

Talk to your doctor first

• Before starting any exercise regimen, you must talk to your doctor about it first. Some blood pressure medications can lower your heart rate and affect the way your body reacts to exercise. Exercise could even make the medicine work differently or change its side effects on you. If you smoke, are overweight, have a chronic heart condition of have had a heart attack, become dizzy after physical exertion, are middle-aged, have a family history of heart disease or just are not sure you're in good health, you must get your doctor's okay before exercising. Your doctor can tell you how much exercise to start with, how often you should do it and when to up the ante on your routine.

Aerobic exercise

• The best exercise to lower blood pressure is a form of aerobic exercise. It can be anything that gets your breath going and your heart pumping. Just 30 minutes a day for most days of the week can be enough. Ideally, you will want to get your heart pumping at a target heart rate for the majority of the exercise. To calculate your target heart rate, take your age and subtract it from 220, then multiply that number by 0.7. This is your target rate. If you are taking medications, you will need your doctor to calculate your target rate for you, as the medications can lower your rate. Do not aim for the target rate right off; start slowly and work your way up the target rate.

  Jogging, running, stair stepping, bicycling and swimming are all examples of aerobic workouts. Even walking can be an aerobic workout as long as you can raise your heart rate and breathing level with it. Walking is a great way to warm up to the exercise regimen. If you are overweight or have hip or knee problems, swimming is perfect for you. In the water, you are weightless, which keeps the strain off of your joints. Swimming provides a total body workout; walking does not.

  Always work your way into an exercise routine. Try walking for 20 minutes every day. When you're ready, increase it to 30 minutes or even an hour, then try cycling or jogging. Always stretch for five minutes before each exercise and cool down by stretching five minutes after the exercise. Do not overexert yourself and stop if you feel tightness or pain in the chest. After you have adjusted to your regimen, add weight resistance to bolster your routine.