Special Training for the lungs lowers blood pressure and protects the heart

Pulmonary exercise improves physical performance and thinking ability

You can exercises by breathing in five minutes a day your body and exercise your mind to lift without even a single weight or to move a step, and yet the risk of a heart attack decrease the ability to think and improve your athletic performance? With the so-called Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training seems to be actually possible.

In a recent study by the University of Colorado Boulder, it was found that an Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training leads to many health benefits for body and mind.

What is the Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training?

The so-called Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training (IMST) is extremely time-saving Exercises, which are still healthy for the body and the mind. “It’s basically strength training for the muscles that you einatmen“, the study’s author, Daniel Craighead, from the University of Colorado Boulder, in a press release stated. You can perform this Exercise at home or in the office, without having to move. The Exercise seems to lower blood pressure and may even increase cognitive and physical performance, added Craighead.

How is the Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training?

The Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training was developed in the 80s, to wean the sick people from ventilators. It is the strong Inhalation through a special device, a so-called inspiratory muscle trainer, which generates a resistance in breathing. It is comparable with the strong Sucking of a straw, wherein the straw is sucked back, explain the researchers.

Training improved sleep, and lowered systolic blood pressure

During the early application in patients with lung disease, the Participants performed a daily 30-minute therapy with a low resistance to increase your lung capacity. In 2016, published Researchers from the University of Arizona results from a study that only 30 inhalations per day can contribute to a larger resistance in patients with obstructive sleep apnea to an improved sleep. People with obstructive sleep apnea tend to have weak respiratory muscles. In addition to a better night’s sleep and the development of a stronger diaphragm and other inspiratory muscles, the Participants showed after six weeks, an unexpected side effect: your systolic blood pressure decreased by 12 mmHg (millimeters of Mercury).

The systolic blood pressure which represents the pressure in the vessels when the heart beats, increases naturally with age, the arteries, which leads to blood vessel damage and an increased risk for heart attack, cognitive decline and kidney damage. It has already been shown in other studies that 30 minutes of aerobic Exercises per day can lower blood pressure. However, only about five percent of adults meet according to government estimates, this requirement. Meanwhile, 65 percent of middle-aged people have a high systolic blood pressure, say the authors of the study.

Further research is needed

“Our goal is time-efficient, to develop evidence-based interventions, the working adults in middle age actually perform werden“, Professor Doug Seals of the University of Colorado Boulder explains. About half of the Tests performed, the researchers in the case of those who had performed an Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training, significant blood pressure drops, and improvements to the function of the large arteries, found. The people from the group with Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training performed also better on certain cognitive tasks and memory tests. These Participants were also able to spend a longer time on a treadmill and your heart rate and your oxygen consumption during exercise was lower. The researchers suspect that these people in need by improving the function of your respiratory muscles so much blood and so the blood can be better on the legs spread, so that people can work out longer. Some cyclists and runners are already using commercially available inspiratory receives of the muscle trainer to gain a competitive advantage. Seals and Craighead emphasize, however, that their results are only of preliminary nature and more research is needed. (as)