Swimming Lowers Blood Pressure

Here’s a good reason to suffer the brief discomfort of jumping in the deep end: swimming appears to lower your blood pressure. The Wall Street Journal reports on a study in which researchers recruited 43 adults, 50 to 80 years old, who were at least mildly hypertensive, and divided them into two groups. One group swam 15 to 45 minutes a day, three to four days a week, while the second group spent that time stretching and learning relaxation exercises. After twelve weeks, the non-swimmers blood pressure showed no change, while the systolic blood pressure of the swimmers dropped 7 percent. The researchers also found that the swimmers’ arteries became more elastic and responsive to changes in blood flow. Read an abstract of the study in the American Journal of Cardiology.