I have first written about struggle with high blood pressure in October 2005, about how the doctor wanted to put me on hypertension medication. I told the doctor, if I start taking those medicine, I may have to take them for life, and that I wanted to try exercise and diet first. I did and eventually the doctor told me he would not even consider me as pre-hypertensive.
Since then, my blood pressure have been fluctuating around the normal 120/88. Recently I have started an exercise regime of the following daily ritual - 5-10 minutes of warm up on the recumbent bike and 30 minutes of brisk walking on the threadmill at a rate which is close to the maximum heart rate for my age group.
The results were the measured heart rate were consistently below the normal 80/120. For example, I just measured with the heart rate and it was only 110/70
As such, I believe exercise was the best medicine for maintaining a healthy heart rate and for cardiovascular health.
However, exercise may be dull and monotonous and my motivation to continue is
1. exercise in step to the beat of a nice song or music
2. keep in mind that exercise keeps away hypertension and other cardiovascular problems, diabetes and cancer. Image those horrible medicine I would have to otherwise take if not for exercise.
