Lower Blood Pressure Naturally with THIS (No Pills!) | 50+

There is a simple scientifically proven way to lower high blood pressure and it doesn't involve pills. In today's video I'm going to reveal what it is and how you can do it at home. The proven natural way to reduce high blood pressure is static stretching. A 2021 study in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health compared two types of exercise for people with mild high blood pressure. In the first group they asked these people to walk five times a week for 30 minutes each time and the second group was asked not to walk but to stretch for 30 minutes five times per week. By the end of eight weeks they found that the people in the stretching group had decreased their blood pressure by an average of six points while the walking group's blood pressure had actually got worse. The results of this study make perfect sense. Let's explain how stretching works and then I'm going to show you the perfect routine so you can replicate these results at home. Stretching works in two ways. First it actually loosens up the arteries and the veins inside your body. It genuinely reduces their stiffness because you're not just stretching your muscles you're stretching everything else as well when you stretch a limb including your veins and arteries. And then the second way that stretching works is it activates the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the part of the nervous system associated with relaxation and when you activate it by stretching it causes the blood vessels to vasodilate and widen which reduces blood pressure. So here's a great stretching routine with the potential to help you reduce high blood pressure. Now before I show you it I just need to make you aware not every stretch is suitable for every person so do get checked out before you give them a try and if they cause you any pain just avoid them. Now as we're doing this stretching routine I think it's really important for blood pressure to focus on deep breathing because that slow deep breaths particularly the exhales will help to drop your blood pressure further and unlike in the study where they did 30 minutes of stretching we're going to try and get enough done in five minutes to still give you a positive result. So we're going to start off with something called the cross body stretch and all you need for this is a chair you're going to sit up nice and tall take one of your arms and put it out in front of you like this and then bring that arm over your body so across your body without moving your spine take the other hand up like this and then hug that arm into your chest. Now if you're doing this correctly you should feel a stretch in that shoulder there so it's actually the back of the shoulder that's stretching it will feel like the stretch is at the front of your body but that's because you've pulled your back of your shoulder across you like this so when you feel that stretch you're just going to hold it there for 30 seconds breathing deeply into the stretch and then relaxing and then after that 30 seconds you're going to shake it off and swap sides so take the other one out take it across your body like this take this hand up and hug it into your chest and then again breathe. Now once you've done your 30 seconds on this side we're going to move on to the next exercise but before I show you it if you're enjoying this routine I've got tons more like it but done at a pace where you can follow along with me at home in my lifelong mobility program you can find details of that below this video. Let's move on to the next exercise now. The next stretch we're going to do is a glute stretch so again same chair this time I want you to shuffle back so that you're in the backrest like this and bring one of your legs up so that your shin is resting on your opposite thigh okay just let that knee drop down and away from you and you could feel one of two things you might feel a stretch in your groin or you might feel a stretch around in your butt either of those is totally fine. Now all we're going to do here when you're in this position is take both your hands take it around your knee and then pull that knee up and across you towards the opposite shoulder. Now once you've got that position there you should feel a stretch now firmly in your glute and this is a lovely position to stretch your glute muscles which can get very tight in many people and again we're just going to hold that for 30 seconds with nice deep breathing throughout. Now after you've done that you're then going to drop your leg down back to where it was before bring your back away from the chair so that you're suspended and you're going to put your hand on top of the knee and now we're going to push the knee down away from you whilst keeping a straight spine. Now again I can feel the stretch in the glute but in a slightly different location some people think this is the piriformis I happen to think it's just another part of the gluteal muscles either way it's doing something really good. So again 30 seconds in this position nice deep breaths so you've done one minute total on this leg and then we're going to swap sides so again this leg comes up like this rest the on the leg sit back in your back rest bring this bring the hands around the knee up and across so they're going towards the opposite shoulder so this time left knee to right shoulder and once you've got the stretch here you're just going to hold it nice 30 seconds smooth deep breathing again and then once you've done your 30 drop that leg down hand on top of the knee come away from your back rest sit up nice and tall push the knee down and you'll feel again a different stretch hold for 30 seconds nice deep breathing throughout and then we can move on to the next exercise. The next exercise we're going to do is the hamstring stretch from a chair and this stretches all of the muscles at the back of your leg here the hamstrings which if they get tight they can cause problems with your hip and also your lower back as well. Now just as a word of warning if you have sciatica hamstring stretches are usually a bad idea because they tend to also stretch the sciatic nerve which i promise you won't be very happy about if you already have that pain at the back of your leg but if you don't this is a great stretch to do so find your chair and come right to the edge of it so you just perch on your sitting bones straighten out the leg that you're going to stretch and keep the other knee bent with the foot flat on the floor now if you look at this leg down there my foot is floppy and i want it to remain floppy throughout i see a lot of people doing this where they pull their toes up and really all that does is stretch the nerve which is not necessarily the best thing so keep your foot floppy you can keep a very slight bend in this knee it doesn't have to be perfectly straight put both your hands on your bent knee sit up nice and tall so straight spine and then keeping your spine straight you're going to hinge at the hips and come forward forward forward trying to touch your nipple onto your knee until you feel a stretch coming down the back of your leg now once you've got that stretch you want maybe a four or five out of ten intensity no more than that breathe deeply and just sink into that stretch holding it still again for 30 seconds now once you've done your 30 seconds you can relax you can bend that knee off and repeat with the other sides put the other leg out keep the foot floppy slight bend in the knee here keep your back nice and tall lean forward just until you feel that stretch down that one and then hold for 30 seconds remember your deep breathing throughout you only need to do one on each leg and then we can move on to the next exercise the final stretch we're going to do in today's routine is the calf stretch and to be clear the calf stretch is not just a great stretch for reducing high blood pressure it's literally one of the best stretches you can do to improve the health of the lower half of your body it's very easy to do you're just going to need a wall to put your hands against so put your two hands against the wall like this and then the leg to be stretched is going to go out behind you with your back heel down on the floor and both feet pointing forward completely parallel now what we're going to do is keep this back leg nice and straight and then bend the front knee keeping the back heel on the floor until you start to feel a stretch in your calf muscle at the back there now once you've got that stretch you're going to hold it there for 30 seconds just about a four or five out of ten intensity and again keep breathing that nice slow out breath will help with the blood pressure and just dilate those blood vessels once you've done your 30 seconds swap over do the other side and this is a lovely stretch actually to come back to multiple times per day you only need to do it once on each side 30 seconds at a time but maybe three or four times a day would give you the best results anyway that's the whole routine i hope you've enjoyed it if you've learned something do drop a comment below because we love to read your thoughts and we'll see you again on the next one