Improve blood pressure and ease sleep apnea in just 5 minutes a day

High blood pressure is one of the biggest risk factors for heart disease — the number one cause of death in America. Part of the reason is that blood pressure, especially systolic (the top number), naturally creeps up as your arteries stiffen with age — leaving you at high risk for heart attack, kidney damage, and even cognitive problems. Of course, while it’s been shown that 30 minutes per day of aerobic exercise can lower blood pressure, it can be hard to fit even that half hour a day in, which is probably why only about 5 percent of adults meet that minimum. But what if there was something far easier — a “workout” that only took 5 minutes a day rather than that 30 minutes and wouldn’t even cause you to break a sweat? It may seem like a pipe dream, but it’s now a reality thanks to researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder. With their workout, you can realize a significant drop in your blood pressure without lifting a single weight or jogging a single step. Inspiratory muscle strength training Back in the 1980s, scientists developed a workout that would help wean critically ill people off ventilators. Called Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training or IMST , the exercise involves breathing in vigorously through a hand-held device, known as an inspiratory muscle trainer. Basically, it’s like sucking really hard through a straw that sucks back (resistance) and it helps to strengthen the muscles you use to breathe in. The patients were told to spend 30 minutes a day doing the IMST workout. But in 2016, researchers at the University of Arizona had a different idea… They wanted to see if doing just 30 inhalations a day, which takes about 5 minutes, with a higher level of resistance […]

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