A 30-Minute Hot Bath Could Help Lower Your Blood Pressure As Much As Moderate Exercise, Study Suggests

If you love a good soak in the bath after a long day, we have exciting news for you and your blood pressure. 

According to a new study published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, hot baths could be doing more than just helping us to unwind. In fact, just 30 minutes soaking in the tub could help to reduce high blood pressure just as effectively as moderate exercise does. 

The heart health benefits of hot baths

If you are unable to exercise often or at-all, this could be a game-changer. Science Alert explain: “for people who may be unable to exercise, hot water immersion, or other forms of what’s known as passive heat therapy, may be an important way of getting some of the same health benefits that exercise can provide.”

Other forms of passive heat therapy include hot water bottles, heated blankets and saunas. 

The science experts add: “Hot water immersion, like exercise itself, provides an increase in blood flow and shear stress along the inside walls of blood vessels, which triggers adaptations that improve vascular function.”

Don’t retire your exercise gear just yet

This study is small and there’s still plenty of research to come. Plus, the researchers urge: “The present findings should not be interpreted as indicating that hot water immersion is intrinsically superior to moderate-intensity exercise per se; rather, they reflect the greater thermal strain achieved during hot water immersion, which elicited substantial shear-mediated vascular stimuli in the absence of active muscle contraction.”

They added that for people who can’t exercise, “hot water immersion could serve as a complementary or alternative strategy to induce beneficial vascular stimuli.”

How to reduce your blood pressure 

If you are concerned about your blood pressure, the NHS recommends cutting down salt, alcohol and caffeine as well as exercising for around 150 minutes per week.