My over enthusiastic GP decided to put me on a 24 hour blood pressure monitoring machine and I thought TaiJi'ers may be interested. I chose to be monitored on a day I do 3 classes. Every 30 mins it took a reading. When I was doing the form, my BP averaged 90 over 65...much the same as when I was asleep (the buzzing and having my arm squeezed woke me enough to get the reading) I decided to do some dynamic push hands for 30 mins with a rather large male training partner....reading was 190/115. I did it to be naughty cos my doctor told me to stop all taiji even though he doesn't know what it is....grrrr. I stopped training and we had a cuppa tea and the next reading half an hour later was 120 over 80. The point being, I have read many articles and tests which purportedly show that TaiJi lowers blood pressure. Although I could only check for 24 hours, I found the results both interesting and half-expected.
Should that be 'normalises blood pressure'? I suspect that dynamic push hands does not come into the equation. My teacher refers to the type of Tai Chi I do during the day with older people as 'hospital Tai Chi'.
I would not agree with that statement. Anything which will set your adrenals off will increase tension and raise the blood pressure, anything which does not set off the adrenals and promotes normalization of breath and release of tension will decrease blood pressure. It really depends on what you are doing.
Indeed, I am a Diabetic and have Hypertension, yet I train Shaolin Lohan, a hard art and it consistently lowers my blood pressure after training and keeps it level throughout training every time, the only time it doesn't is when I don't breathe properly and thus put the body under greater stress. So, with the medical proof verifying my improvment and statement, I and the medical doctors who monitor me, will have to vote for what I said as truth. Many others have seen the same thing from doing styles other than IMA's
I'm not saying that MA will not lower your BP, I'm just saying that a statement like "any MA will lower your BP" is a generalization. I think the lower BP result is dependent on your personal state of mind/body during and after practice, i.e. feeling sufficiently calm and relaxed for your parasympathetic nervous system to kick in. Saying that, there is no guarantee that any specific activity will lower your blood pressure, even an exercise in relaxation will increase blood pressure if there is sufficient mental tension. I think the main difference is relaxation in body and mind, and the BP is dependent on this, regardless of activity. Then again, I'm no doctor.
It depends of the cause of High blood pressure. Exercise in general will keep the body healthier and will reduce high blood pressure. The Bear.
Just did a quick search on the causes of high BP, came across this sort of statement quite a few times "In 90 to 95 percent of high blood pressure cases, the cause is unknown." Personally, I would guess the main cause is stress/anxiety. One guy I work with is on beta blockers to lower his BP, but I find it rather strange, as he is always stressing about all sorts of crap that one should not really worry about (IMO). So in essence from my understanding, this guy is causing his BP to rise by his behavior, plus he gets no exercise whatsoever. I would guess if he took up exercise he would be able to deal with his stress better and in turn be able to not stress as much, in turn lowering his blood pressure. But I don't quite get why people are so attached to the way that they think, if it causes them harm, surely if the way you use your mind is bad for you, the logical step would be to change the way you use it. Its funny though, I tried to explain this concept to a few people in the past, but they all seemed unwilling to change regardless of the negative effects that they enforce on themselves, in fact some of them became quite negative and even wound up at my suggestion, I thought this was strange. Anyway, I'm just rambling..
Also depends on the amount of hypertension, someone with say 190-130 would probably do well not to due extremely strenuous activity, but start slow (ala TCC or something similar). Where as some with mild hypertension 140/90 would benefit from either. There are also too many factors that can change BP, diet, stress, etc. I think most studies that show TCC lowering BP is based on the people that need something "light and easy" rather than Shaolin or "EMA". The other thing is whether or not the exercise lowers your BP for just the duration of the exercise or overall.
