BACKGROUND
High blood pressure is a leading risk factor for cardiovascular, brain, and kidney diseases. In Japan, a significant number of individuals are undergoing treatment for hypertension. High blood pressure is linked to unhealthy lifestyles, and its treatment includes medications and lifestyle interventions such as exercise.
OBJECTIVE
We aimed to investigate the effect of regular dance therapy interventions with videos on blood pressure in hypertensive patients to provide a reference for prescription studies on dance exercise therapy in these patients.
METHODS
This non-blind, double-arm, randomized trial was conducted at Juntendo University, Tokyo, from April to December 2023. 40 hypertensive patients were randomly assigned to either an intervention group (dance) or a control group (self-selected exercise), with each group comprising 20 participants. The intervention group performed daily dance exercises using modern dance videos (10 minutes per video) uploaded to YouTube. The control group performed non-dance exercises for 10 min daily. The activity levels of the participants were monitored using a triaxial accelerometer. Blood pressure and body composition were measured at baseline and after 2 months.
RESULTS
34 patients were included in the study (16 in the intervention group and 18 in the control group). The exclusion criteria were lack of blood pressure data, medication changes, or withdrawal from the study. Overall, 18 (52.9%) patients were female, aged 56±10. The basic characteristics did not differ between the 2 groups. The intervention group showed a significant reduction in both systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP) compared with the control group. Multivariable analysis showed that SBP was -9.7±3.3 (P = 0.0064) and DBP was 12.8±6.1 (P = 0.0047).
CONCLUSIONS
Unsupervised YouTube dance exercise was more effective in lowering blood pressure than conventional exercise prescriptions. We hope that these results will contribute to exercise therapy for patients with lifestyle-related diseases.