Chronic endurance exercise has been shown to
result in a decrement in resting blood pressure.1,2 In
addition, a single acute bout of exercise can cause a
transient lowering of blood pressure in the period
following exercise. This was first documented by
Fitzgerald3 who anecdotally reported the temporary
decrease of his hypertension following acute sessions
of jogging. Although this phenomenon has
received little attention, more recent investigations
have focused on potential mechanisms.4,5 Unfortunately,
the characteristics of the post-exercise hypotension
(PEH) and the exercise needed to elicit it
have not been well outlined.
In examining the effects of exercise duration,
Bennett et al4 have suggested that, in hypertensive
subjects, the magnitude of the pressure decrement
increases with an increased duration of exercise, but
could not substantiate this in a normotensive population.
In that study, however, blood pressure was
measured during 3-min rest periods following successive
10-min exercise bouts. A brief hypotension
immediately following exercise is often attributed to
a pooling of blood in the vasodilated muscle beds.
The mechanism of such decrements immediately