Pressure Drop! Grip Tracker

The Pressure Drop Grip Tracker is a simple tool to help you perform an exercise designed to lower your blood pressure. Ok, it’s really a glorified timer. But this tool makes doing a blood pressure-lowering exercise much easier.

Many people who struggle with hypertension (high blood pressure, or high BP) seek to control their condition without the risk, side effects, and expense of prescription medication. Alternative methods include breathing exercises, aerobic exercise, meditation, dietary changes and dietary supplements. The American Heart Association issued a statement on some of these approaches in April of 2013. The full statement is available as a PDF document on the American Heart Association’s website.

One of the methods, described as a “likely effective” treatment for lowering BP, is an isometric handgrip exercise (see pages 16-17 of the PDF document). The exercise can be done using a tennis ball or an inexpensive hand grip device that can be found at nearly any sporting goods store. Done a few times a week you should see results within 2-3 months. I recommend getting in the habit of doing the exercise daily since it doesn’t take much time or effort. The exercise is very safe to do, but the AHA recommends that people whose BP is higher than 180/110 first get their BP in a lower range before performing these exercises.

The Pressure Drop Grip Tracker app will help you perform the exercise. The app is essentially a timer, but one that is geared especially for doing this exercise. And using the app makes it much easier to keep track of where you are in the exercise and to multitask while doing the exercise. You will be able to perform the exercise while taking a walk, talking on the phone, watching TV, etc. because the app will cue you when to switch hands and when your workout is complete.

Multiple papers have been published showing the BP-lowering effects of this exercise; the AHA paper merely summarizes other research. The exercise entails:

1. Squeezing a tennis ball or hand gripper device in one hand (while the other hand rests) at about 30% capacity for two minutes. Isometric means you will squeeze and hold the ball or device, as opposed to continuously flexing your hand muscles dynamically.

2. Switching the ball or gripper to the other hand and performing the exercise with this hand (30% capacity for two minutes) while the first hand rests
Repeat for up to four reps with each hand, taking a total of 16 minutes. The AHA paper actually says “this consists of several intermittent bouts of handgrip contractions at 30% maximal strength lasting 2 minutes each for a total of 12 to 15 minutes per session” but I’m rounding up to 16 minutes so you can complete four full two-minute sets with each hand.

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