Simple home exercises for resistant hypertension and sleep apnoea care

Fernando Ribeiro

Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal

Many people whose high blood pressure responds poorly to medication also have obstructive sleep apnoea, a condition that causes breathing to repeatedly stop during sleep. Together, these conditions increase the risk of heart disease and stroke. Although a device can treat apnoea by keeping the airways open during sleep, blood pressure often remains high. This project aims to test whether short, simple home-based exercise sessions can improve blood pressure and sleep.

The intervention consists of short evening sessions of wall-squat exercises, which may help lower blood pressure and improve sleep without requiring any special equipment. A team with expertise in cardiovascular health, sleep medicine and exercise-based interventions, will collect early data on blood pressure, sleep and adherence to the programme and will then evaluate whether the intervention is safe, acceptable and realistic to include in daily life.

This approach could offer a low-cost addition to standard care for people with resistant hypertension and obstructive sleep apnoea, who face a high cardiovascular risk. The results could also support a larger clinical trial.

CPAP-Plus: Adding Isometric Wall-squat Exercise to Improve Blood Pressure in Resistant Hypertension with CPAP-Treated Obstructive Sleep Apnea

€80.000,00