Acute exercise reduces vascular reactivity to mental challenge in offspring of hypertensive families

Objective To examine the effects of acute exercise on cardiac and vascular responses to mental challenge in males at risk of hypertension. Design A within-subjects, counterbalanced design. Participants Normotensive, healthy males with (n = 22) and without (n = 8) family history of hypertension. Method A moderately stressful behavioural task was performed for 10 min after 20 min of moderate intensity cycle ergometry exercise, and on a separate occasion after an attentional control task. The blood pressure, heart rate, cardiac output, stroke volume, forearm blood flow, forearm vascular resistance, and total peripheral resistance were measured at rest, during the task, and at recovery. Stress reactivity was defined as the difference in values between the task and the baseline. Results An enhanced peripheral vasodilatation response to the Stroop task was observed in men with familial risk of hypertension compared with the control group. However, this enhanced response was significantly blunted in offspring hypertensive participants following an acute bout of exercise so that differences in the vasodilatation response were no longer observed in comparison with men without familial risk of hypertension. The post-exercise heart rate reactivity in comparison with the control session was also significantly blunted in both groups (P < 0.05). Conclusion Acute exercise may be an important intervention strategy to reduce the impact of cardiovascular hyper-reactivity on disease progression in males with familial risk of hypertension.