Clinical ad Experimental Hypertension

Running head: WALKING AS PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
Analysing the Impact of Walking on Hypertension
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1WALKING AS PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
Introduction
Hypertension is globally the most severe, expensive, and avoidable risk factor for
cardiovascular diseases. This needs comprehensive treatment and prevention programs. The fact
that regular physical activity decreases blood pressure is grounded on evidence based guidelines.
Recent meta-analysis showed substantial reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressure in
people who follow regular walking programs (Pescatello et al., 2015). Changes of diet can lower
blood pressure in hypertensive patients, thereby reducing the risk of cardio-vascular disease
(Murtagh et al., 2015). In hypertensive patients with a daily aerobic exercise regimen, a number
of studies have recorded BP decrease. Higher physical exercise has also been shown to be
correlated with less cardiovascular disease risk (Alves et al., 2016). Walking is considered as a
mild to moderate aerobic exercise and can be done with minimal risk for most people (Refer to
Figure 1). Many studies have shown that walking in hypertensive patients has hypotensive
consequences (Espay et al., 2016). Nonetheless, in most experiments investigating the effect of
walking on BP, only regular BP was calculated (Ohta et al., 2015). It has been found that BP
decreases during exercise and reduces after activity is over. Thus, this paper focuses on the
influence of aerobic exercise like walking on blood pressure and will draw evidences from
various papers and journals to support the validity of the research area.
Methodology
Many online repositories including CINAHL, Pub Med and Google Scholar were
scanned for relevant articles related to the field of research in order to carry out this review a
total of 25 papers relating to the topic were discovered, but only 12 of these 25 articles meet the
requirements for inclusion. Those papers that have no definitive conclusions and lack adequate

2WALKING AS PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
research and empirical studies have been withdrawn. The papers have been selected or analyzed
on the basis of information available to them by skimming through the abstract of the paper.
Certain keywords like “walking and blood pressue”, “Aerobic exercise”, “blood pressure non-
pharmacological treatment”, “walking reduces blood pressure”, “hypertension and walking”,
“walking exercise”, “Guided walking for blood pressure’, “Physical Activity and blood pressure”
were searched. The studies included in the review were carried out in 2013-19 in order to obtain
current findings on the particular topic.
Figure 1: Impact of Walking in Controlling Hypertension, Source:
(Naturopathydigest.com., 2019)
Literature review
A healthy aerobic physical activity is a significant element in many educational strategies
for physical activity promotion. Since walking is common and available to anyone at low risk of
injury, costly facilities, appliances or clothes are needless (Pescatello et al., 2015). Walking can
be done independently or in a collective at different intensities and speeds. Higher levels of
cardiorespiratory fitness are correlated with brisk walking. According to Soroush et al. (2013)
studies of public health suggested that taking 10,000 steps a day has significant effects on health.