This is a non-drug method for lowering blood pressure.
You use an ordinary hand grip with a spring. These can be purchased for less than $10 from an athletic store. You want to apply about one-third of your gripping strength for one minute. That means you don’t want the easiest one and you don’t want one that is extremely resistant, either.
You use an ordinary hand grip with a spring. These can be purchased for less than $10 from an athletic store. You want to apply about one-third of your gripping strength for one minute. That means you don’t want the easiest one and you don’t want one that is extremely resistant, either.
The idea is to grip continuously for one minute and then relax your grip for one minute. This is one cycle, and you want to do this cycle four times, three days a week. That’s all it takes to get results.
Gripping a rubber ball will not work. You need to use spring-loaded hand grips.
Subjects in a scientific study who did this exercise for ten weeks experienced a 19-point drop in their systolic blood pressure (Med Sci Sport Exerc 03;35(2):251-6). The subjects had already been using medication for an average of nine years, and their average age was 67.5 years. Needless to say, the reported 19-point drop was very impressive.
Even though there was no explanation given for this effect, when I told this to a salesman who was selling me the set of hand grips, he said, “Oh, it’s obvious that if you exercise and get the stress out, then your blood pressure will drop.”
Health regimens are easy to start but difficult to keep up. I'll write SQUEEZE on the big wall calendar in my kitchen under Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And I'll get back to you in ten weeks to let you know what happened!
The citation for the original research has already been given above. I saw this information written up in the August 2004 issue of the newsletter Alternatives, Vol. 10, No. 14, “Exercise Doesn’t Have to Be That Complicated.” [www.drdavidwilliams.com]
Some Questions for Discussion:
1. Have you ever successfully lost a lot of weight or changed a bad health habit? Was it difficult to lose weight? If so, did you use diet aids of some kind?
2. Did you ever quit smoking? If the answer is yes, how many years were you a smoker before you were able to quit?
3. They call high blood pressure the silent killer, because it has no symptoms. Have you had your blood pressure checked recently?
4. Blood pressure changes constantly. Many people experience a rise in blood pressure whenever they see their doctor, maybe because it’s like taking a test. This is called the white coat syndrome or white coat hypertension. Does this happen to you?
Copyright © 2011 Barbara A. English
All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment