(Press-News.org) Working out just five minutes daily via a practice described as "strength training for your breathing muscles" lowers blood pressure and improves some measures of vascular health as well as, or even more than, aerobic exercise or medication, new CU Boulder research shows.
The study, published June 29 in the Journal of the American Heart Association, provides the strongest evidence yet that the ultra-time-efficient maneuver known as High-Resistance Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training (IMST) could play a key role in helping aging adults fend off cardiovascular disease - the nation's leading killer.
In the United States alone, 65% of adults over age 50 have above-normal blood pressure - putting them at greater risk of heart attack or stroke. Yet fewer than 40% meet recommended aerobic exercise guidelines.
"There are a lot of lifestyle strategies that we know can help people maintain cardiovascular health as they age. But the reality is, they take a lot of time and effort and can be expensive and hard for some people to access," said lead author Daniel Craighead, an assistant research professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology. "IMST can be done in five minutes in your own home while you watch TV."
Developed in the 1980s as a way to help critically ill respiratory disease patients strengthen their diaphragm and other inspiratory (breathing) muscles, IMST involves inhaling vigorously through a hand-held device which provides resistance. Imagine sucking hard through a tube that sucks back.
Initially, when prescribing it for breathing disorders, doctors recommended a 30-minute-per-day regimen at low resistance. But in recent years, Craighead and colleagues have been testing whether a more time-efficient protocol--30 inhalations per day at high resistance, six days per week--could also reap cardiovascular, cognitive and sports performance improvements.
For the new study, they recruited 36 otherwise healthy adults ages 50 to 79 with above normal systolic blood pressure (120 millimeters of mercury or higher). Half did High-Resistance IMST for six weeks and half did a placebo protocol in which the resistance was much lower.
After six weeks, the IMST group saw their systolic blood pressure (the top number) dip nine points on average, a reduction which generally exceeds that achieved by walking 30 minutes a day five days a week. That decline is also equal to the effects of some blood pressure-lowering drug regimens.
Even six weeks after they quit doing IMST, the IMST group maintained most of that improvement.
"We found that not only is it more time-efficient than traditional exercise programs, the benefits may be longer lasting," Craighead said.
The treatment group also saw a 45% improvement in vascular endothelial function, or the ability for arteries to expand upon stimulation, and a significant increase in levels of nitric oxide, a molecule key for dilating arteries and preventing plaque buildup. Nitric oxide levels naturally decline with age.
Markers of inflammation and oxidative stress, which can also boost heart attack risk, were significantly lower after people did IMST.
And, remarkably, those in the IMST group completed 95% of the sessions.
"We have identified a novel form of therapy that lowers blood pressure without giving people pharmacological compounds and with much higher adherence than aerobic exercise," said senior author Doug Seals, a Distinguished Professor of Integrative Physiology. "That's noteworthy."
The practice may be particularly helpful for postmenopausal women.
In previous research, Seals' lab showed that postmenopausal women who are not taking supplemental estrogen don't reap as much benefit from aerobic exercise programs as men do when it comes to vascular endothelial function. IMST, the new study showed, improved it just as much in these women as in men.
"If aerobic exercise won't improve this key measure of cardiovascular health for postmenopausal women, they need another lifestyle intervention that will," said Craighead. "This could be it."
Preliminary results suggest MST also improved some measures of brain function and physical fitness. And previous studies from other researchers have shown it can be useful for improving sports performance.
"If you're running a marathon, your respiratory muscles get tired and begin to steal blood from your skeletal muscles," said Craighead, who uses IMST in his own marathon training. "The idea is that if you build up endurance of those respiratory muscles, that won't happen and your legs won't get as fatigued."
Seals said they're uncertain exactly how a maneuver to strengthen breathing muscles ends up lowering blood pressure, but they suspect it prompts the cells lining blood vessels to produce more nitric oxide, enabling them to relax.
The National Institutes of Health recently awarded Seals $4 million to launch a larger follow-up study of about 100 people, comparing a 12-week IMST protocol head-to-head with an aerobic exercise program.
Meanwhile, the research group is developing a smartphone app to enable people to do the protocol at home using already commercially available devices.
Those considering IMST should consult with their doctor first. But thus far, IMST has proven remarkably safe, they said.
"It's easy to do, it doesn't take long, and we think it has a lot of potential to help a lot of people," said Craighead.
INFORMATION:
A University of Arkansas researcher and international colleagues found that employed individuals, on average, are 35.3% more likely to be infected with the flu virus.
The findings confirm a long-held assumption about one prevalent way illness spreads and could influence government policy on public health and several issues for private companies, from optimal design and management of physical work spaces to policy decisions about sick leave and remote work.
To track influenza incidence, Dongya "Don" Koh, assistant professor of economics in the Sam M. Walton College of Business, and colleagues relied on nationally representative data from the Medical ...
A new study shows that colleges students are experiencing significant grief reactions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper, "College Student Experiences of Grief and Loss Amid the COVID-19 Global Pandemic," was recently published in OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying.
"This study aimed to identify the most common non-death losses and grief reactions experienced by undergraduate and graduate college students amid the pandemic," said author Erica H. Sirrine, Ph.D., director of Social Work at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. "What we found is that students ...
New Brunswick, N.J. (June 28, 2021) - Rutgers researchers have developed a machine learning model using a physics-based simulator and real-world meteorological data to better predict offshore wind power.
The findings appear in the journal Applied Energy.
Offshore wind is rapidly maturing into a major source of renewable energy worldwide and is projected to grow by 13% in the next two decades and 15-fold by 2040 to become a $1 trillion industry, matching capital spending on gas- and coal-fired power generation. In the United States, for instance, New York and New Jersey recently awarded two offshore ...
When it comes to climate change, not all organisms will lose out. A new Cal Poly study finds that rattlesnakes are likely to benefit from a warming climate.
A combination of factors makes a warming climate beneficial to rattlesnakes that are found in almost every part of the continental United States but are especially common in the Southwest.
Rattlers are experts at thermoregulation. Researchers found that, when given a choice, the snakes prefer a body temperature of 86-89 degrees Fahrenheit, a much warmer temperature than they generally experience in nature. The average ...
CHICAGO (June 30, 2021) -- Four leading medical specialty societies released a new clinical practice guideline today that includes recommendations for reducing blood loss during heart surgery and improving patient outcomes. The document, a multidisciplinary collaboration among The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists, the American Society of ExtraCorporeal Technology, and the Society for the Advancement of Patient Blood Management, is available online in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery and two other journals.
"As medicine evolves and we learn more, it always is important to review past ...
Na3V2(PO4)2F3(NVPF), a cathode material used in sodium-ion batteries (SIB), features ultrafast Na+ migration and high structural stability because of its three-dimensional open framework. However, the poor intrinsic electronic conductivity of NVPF often leads to high polarization, low Coulombic efficiency, and unsatisfactory rate performance, which hinder its commercial application.
Recently, a group led by Prof. Shuangqiang Chen and Prof. Yong Wang from Shanghai University synthesized zirconium-doped NVPF nanoparticles coated with a nitrogen-doped ...
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have succeeded in developing a method to label mRNA molecules, and thereby follow, in real time, their path through cells, using a microscope - without affecting their properties or subsequent activity. The breakthrough could be of great importance in facilitating the development of new RNA-based medicines.
RNA-based therapeutics offer a range of new opportunities to prevent, treat and potentially cure diseases. But currently, the delivery of RNA therapeutics into the cell is inefficient. For new therapeutics to fulfil ...
Wine grapes are particularly finicky when it comes to their environment. For instance, heatwaves and droughts lead to earlier berry ripening and lackluster wine. And these types of episodes are expected to intensify as Earth's climate changes. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have tweaked growing conditions for Cabernet Sauvignon grapes to slow down their ripening, which increased the levels of compounds associated with wine's characteristic floral and fruity notes.
As grapes ripen and change color from light green to deep red, sugars and aroma compounds accumulate in the berries. But, when they ripen quickly because of heat or water stress, the resulting fruits produce ...
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, attacks nerve cells known as motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord, gradually leading to paralysis. The loss of function of an important gene, C9orf72, may affect communication between motor neurons and muscles in people with this disease. These findings were revealed by the team of Dr Kessen Patten of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in the prestigious journal Communications Biology.
A mutation in the C9orf72 gene is the primary genetic cause of ALS. The mutation in C9orf72 consists of an expansion of a sequence of six DNA bases (GGGGCC) that is very unusual, going from a few copies (less than 20 in a healthy person) to more than 1000 copies. The mutation, in part resulting in a loss of function, ...
DALLAS, June 30, 2021 -- Regularly eating a Southern-style diet may increase the risk of sudden cardiac death, while routinely consuming a Mediterranean diet may reduce that risk, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access journal of the American Heart Association.
The Southern diet is characterized by added fats, fried foods, eggs, organ meats (such as liver or giblets), processed meats (such as deli meat, bacon and hotdogs) and sugar-sweetened beverages. The Mediterranean diet is high in fruits, vegetables, fish, whole grains and legumes and low in meat and dairy.
"While this study was observational in nature, the results suggest that diet may be a modifiable risk factor for sudden cardiac death, and, therefore, diet ...
