Hot pants for good health: Scientists try heat therapy to lower blood pressure

Miriam Fauzia, The Dallas Morning News (TNS)

DALLAS — The saying goes that you should stay out of the kitchen if you can’t take the heat, but new research suggests otherwise — for the sake of your blood pressure.

In a study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers at UNT Health Fort Worth found at-home heat therapy may hold the key to lowering blood pressure. A group of older adults wore heated pants for an hour a day, four days a week. After eight weeks, their blood flow improved and their systolic blood pressure, which measures blood flow when the heart beats, dropped by around 5 points.

The study comes at a time when nearly 120 million American adults have high blood pressure , but only one in four of those adults has it under control. In Texas, about 32%