Effect of Aerobic Exercise on Blood Pressure of Patients With Type 2 Diabetes: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Hypertension is one of the prevalent and dangerous complications of diabetes mellitus. As it is difficult to control hypertension, the necessity of using new techniques such as non-pharmaceutical methods and complementary therapy increased. This study aimed to determine the effect of aerobic exercise on the blood pressure of patients with type 2 diabetes.
This study was a quasi-experimental randomized trial conducted on 67 volunteered patients with type 2 diabetes. The participants were randomly assigned to aerobic exercise (n=33) and control (n=34) groups. The exercise group walked 30 minutes, 3 days a week for 8 consecutive weeks. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure of the samples were measured before and after the intervention. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, paired t test, Independent t test, and Chi-square test using SPSS (v. 16). P value less than 0.05 was considered significant.
The difference between the systolic and diastolic blood pressure of the groups before the intervention was not significant (P>0.05). After the intervention, there was no significant difference in terms of systolic and diastolic blood pressure of the exercise group compared with the baseline (P>0.05). No significant difference was determined between groups in terms of systolic and diastolic blood pressure after the intervention (P>0.05).
According to the findings, 8 weeks of aerobic exercise (walking) did not reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure in patients with type 2 diabetes.