According to a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine exercise may be as effective as prescribed drugs to lower high blood pressure. But researchers say that there are no direct head to head comparative trials of exercise and blood pressure lowering drugs and the numbers of participants in some of the included studies were relatively small. They also add that while promising the findings shouldn't persuade hypertension patients to ditch their blood pressure lowering drugs in favour of an exercise regimen just yet although patients might want to boost their physical activity levels advises the lead study author