Published Paper


Physiological Effect of a 10-Week Aerobic Exercise Programme on Female Hypertensive Members in Imo State, Nigeria

1 Ugo Philomena, N. N. ; 2 Opara, Jude
Nigeria
Page: 1639-1655
Published on: 2025 December

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of a 10-week aerobic exercise programme on resting systolic blood pressure, resting heart rate and respiratory rate of female hypertensive members of Recreation Clubs in Owerri Municipal Council of Imo State. The study was guided by three research questions and three corresponding null hypotheses. The study adopted randomized pretest–posttest control group design. In this multivariable trials; 108 female hypertensive members constituted the population of the study, and 50 volunteers (30 experimental, 20 control) were used as the sample size of the study. A Sphygmomanometer model DM-500 was used to measure blood pressure, while standardized Stethoscopes models LG300 and HG900 were used to measure heart rate and respiration rate, respectively. The study examined the fundamental assumptions of homoscedasticity (using Levene's Test), normality (using the Shapiro-Wilk and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests), and homogeneity of regression slopes (using the ANCOVA model's interaction term), all of which were met; hence, ANCOVAwas confidently employed for the analysis. For the research questions, mean and standard deviation were used to analyze the data, and ANCOVA was used to test the hypotheses at a 5% significant level. After the 10-week aerobic exercise programme, the results showed notable gains. Resting heart rate dropped from 99.60 bpm to 92.37 bpm (mean difference = 7.23 bpm, p < 0.05), respiratory rate dropped from 20.43 breaths per minute to 18.43 breaths per minute (mean difference = 2.00 breaths per minute, p < 0.05), and resting systolic blood pressure dropped from 149.13 mmHg to 139.23 mmHg (mean difference = 9.9 mmHg, p < 0.05). These findings support aerobic exercise's potential involvement in lowering cardiovascular risk by demonstrating that it is a successful non-pharmacological strategy for controlling important physiological markers of hypertension. This study contributes to the increasing amount of data demonstrating the benefits of aerobic exercise for lowering blood pressure and enhancing cardiovascular health.

 

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