A recent American study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology showed that researchers at UNT Health Fort Worth concluded that home heat therapy may be the ideal solution for lowering blood pressure. The Dallas Morning News wrote About the study.
A number of elderly people wore thermal pants for an hour a day, 4 days a week. After 8 weeks, their blood flow improved and systolic blood pressure, which measures blood flow when the heart beats, dropped by about 5 points.
The study comes at a time when about 120 million American adults suffer from high blood pressure, but only 1 in 4 of these adults can control it.
In Texas, 32% of adults say a health care professional has told them they have high blood pressure. During 2023, high blood pressure was the main cause or contributing factor in the death of more than 664,000 people in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Amit Khera, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at UT Southwest Medical Center, who was not involved in the research, said that working to find ways to reduce the risks of high blood pressure, such as stroke and heart attack, is important, and “this is an important study to prove the concept.”
Khaira does not view heat therapy as an “alternative to high blood pressure medications,” but he finds it interesting. “Thermal therapy could be an additional potential treatment for heart disease and other problems,” Khera said.
It is noteworthy that anyone who comes out of a sauna or sits in a hot tub knows that heat gives a good feeling. Research confirms this, as a study this year concluded
Current evidence suggests that sitting in hot water can lower blood pressure, stimulate the immune system, and, over time, improve how the body deals with heat stress.
Other studies have found that heat therapy can improve cardiovascular function in middle-aged and older adults, whether…
Chronic diseases or not, its benefits could be similar to aerobic training, according to Scott Romero, associate professor of physiology and anatomy at UNT Health, who led the study.
Cardiac responses
“What’s surprising is that the cardiovascular responses to heat exposure almost match the responses to exercise,” Romero said.
He added, “The heart rate changes, the support flow changes, and the muscles change. It is almost identical, and this is one of the reasons why we believe that heat therapy is effective, especially among groups that are subject to clinical trials, because it almost mimics the exercises.”
Raising body temperature through heat therapy means spending regular time in a sauna or hot tub, which is difficult if one cannot
Access to either.
In order to make heat therapy more common, Romero and Ysabella Ruiz, the study’s lead author and a student in Romero’s lab, tested whether pants with tubes that circulate hot water could achieve the same cardiovascular results.
Romero said that the pants were inspired by suits developed by NASA to study cardiovascular functions during heat stress.
The researchers recruited 19 adults, between the ages of 55 and 80, who had not been diagnosed with high blood pressure, and divided them into two groups of equal age. The group wore pants that circulated water at approximately 124 degrees Fahrenheit, raising the skin temperature to about 104 degrees.
Members of the other group wore moderately warm pants, as the water was heated to about 88 degrees Fahrenheit, which raised the skin temperature to more than 90 degrees. Romero said that the feeling of wearing these pants will be good, but they will not make people sweat like the group that underwent heat treatment.
Measure blood pressure 3 times
Participants had their blood pressure measured three times: at the beginning of the study, during the day while doing activities, and after 8 weeks. The researchers also used ultrasound before and after the treatment to see how effective it was in helping expand the endothelium, the inner lining of blood vessels in order to allow blood flow.
The participants continued to practice their normal daily activities, and allocated an hour a day for 4 days a week to wearing pants. Eight weeks later, when they returned to the lab for the final results, the researchers found that systolic blood pressure was 5 points lower for the group that underwent heat therapy, and ultrasound showed that the inner lining of the blood vessels in the group had improved and was expanding better than before.