Welcome to the quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Brock Armstrong, and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

If you've been reading the health news lately, you'll probably know that around 30 million

Americans magically just failed their blood pressure test.

Now, as much as I'd like to make a political joke or a reference to the

stock market or even a fast food quip here, the reason wasn't any of those heart palpitating

factors. What happened was that the American Heart Association lowered the measuring stick on what

they consider to be a healthy blood pressure.

As of a couple weeks ago, high blood pressure will now be defined as 130 over 80 millimeters of

mercury or greater. That means a bunch of us may need to start being more diligent than we

previously were when the measurement was 140 over 90. That is,

if we don't want to get hounded by our GPs. The new recommendation is a direct response to the

results of a large federally funded study called Sprint that was published in 2015 in the New England

Journal of Medicine. Let's start with this. If your heart can take it easy

and not work as hard to pump all your life-giving blood, then the force that is exerted on your

arteries will decrease, and that will, in turn, lower your blood pressure. We all know that

consistent physical activity can make your heart stronger, so it follows

that a stronger heart muscle will pump your blood with less effort. Also, we've known for a long time

that simply by getting more movement in your day, you can lower your systolic blood pressure,

and that's the top number in the reading, by about 4 to 9 millimeters

of mercury.

And you know what?

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