Got high cholesterol or high blood pressure? Would you like to lose a few pounds, improve your fitness level and reduce risks of heart attack? If the answers are yes I have some great news for you!

A study reported in Circulation; Journal of the American Heart Association has come up with some remarkable conclusions. Barnard and colleagues studied 11 obese men aged 38 to 72, who voluntarily enrolled in the Pritikin Longevity Center 21-day program. Seven of the men had hypertension defined as a systolic blood pressure reading of over 140 or diastolic reading of over 90.

The exercise consisted of brisk walking on a treadmill for 45-60 minutes per day. By the end of the 3-week program the blood pressure of all seven previously hypertensive men was normal.

Exercise has been known to improve blood pressure but the extent of this progress in such a short period of time surprised the researchers.

Oxidative stress, the technical term for the presence of oxygen free radicals in the blood, was reduced by 28%. This is extremely significant. Free radicals wound cell membranes and damage DNA codes within the cell