Why does diastolic pressure decrease as heart rate increases

Measuring heart rate alone is not an indicator of high or low blood pressure, although it can measure your cardiovascular activity and oxygen consumption. People with hypertension high blood pressure , must regularly monitor their blood pressure and work closely with their physician to determine treatment options. Most physicians will continue to monitor both blood pressure and heart rate for all patients, since they indicate different factors of heart health. If you have questions or concerns about your blood pressure or heart rate, contact the Oklahoma Heart Hospital to schedule an appointment with one of our physicians.

Skip to main content. The difference between blood pressure and heart rate. The slight decrease in diastolic blood pressure is due primarily to the vasodilation of the arteries from the exercise bout. Thus, the expansion in artery size may lower blood pressure during the diastolic phase. A failure of the systolic blood pressure to rise with an increase in intensity called exertional hypotension is considered abnormal, and may occur in patients with a number of cardiovascular problems.

Contrariwise, an increase in diastolic blood pressure of more than 10 mmHg during or after exercise represents an unstable form of hypertension, and may be associated with coronary artery disease.

Following exercise, systolic blood pressure progressively declines during an active recovery. With a passive such as seated recovery, systolic blood pressure may drop abruptly due to the pooling of blood in the peripheral areas of the body.

There may also be a drop in diastolic blood pressure, during the recovery phase of exercise due to the vasodilation. Persons on medications will have variable responses to exercise. Therefore it is prudent to contact their health practitioners to be aware of what would be considered normative under these circumstances.

Table 1. When diastolic and systolic blood pressure falls into different categories, the higher category should be selected for classification. Archives of Internal Medicine. Nieman, D. The Exercise-Health Connection. Human Kinetics. Top of Page. This number represents the force of blood against your vessel walls when the heart is relaxed.

Blood pressure is a measurement of the force of blood against the walls of your blood vessels. There are two parts to a blood pressure measurement — systolic, or the top number, and diastolic, or the bottom number, as explained by the Mayo Clinic. The heart contracts to push blood out to the rest of your body and then relaxes as it refills.

Systolic blood pressure represents the force of blood against your artery walls when your heart is contracting. Diastolic blood pressure measures the force of blood when the heart is refilling. When you begin exercising, your muscles need more oxygen. As a result, your heart begins to pump faster to deliver oxygenated blood more quickly.

This causes an increase in your systolic blood pressure. As explained in a July article published in the journal Clinical Hypertension , some increase in systolic blood pressure is a normal response to exercise. In some cases, systolic blood pressure might increase too much during exercise — a symptom of a condition called exercise hypertension. This condition is often defined by a systolic BP of mmHG or more for women and mmHg or more for men.