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Exercise Hypertension
Exercise
Hypertension is an excessive rise in blood pressure during exercise.
Many of those with exercise hypertension have spikes in systolic
pressure to 250mmHg or greater.According to Klaus (ref 1) a rise
in systolic blood pressure to over 200mmHg when exercising at
100W is 'pathological', and rises over to over 220mmHg need control
by appropriate drugs.
In healthy individuals the response of the diastolic
pressure to 'dynamic' exercise (walking, running) of moderate
intensity is to remain constant or to fall slightly (due to the
improved blood flow), but in some indivuals a rise of 10mmHg or
greater is found.
Recent work
at Johns Hopkins with a group of older athletes (55 to 75) with
mild hypertension has found a correlation of those with exercise
hypertension with the reduced ability of the major blood vessels
to change in size in response to increased blood flow (probably
due to impaired function of the endothelial cells in the vessel
walls). This is to be differentiated from stiffness of the blood-vessel
walls, which was not found to be correlated with the effect.
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