Acute impact of upper and lower limb resistance training on common carotid arterial stiffness and local hemodynamics

Increase in common carotid arterial stiffness is a risk factor for cardio- and cerebrovascular diseases. It has been reported that resistance training (RT) may increase or decrease the arterial stiffness. In this paper, acute impacts of upper and/or lower limb RT on common carotid arterial stiffness and local hemodynamics were investigated. Twenty two healthy subjects were randomly assigned to upper limb RT group (m = 12) and lower limb RT group (m = 10). The upper limb group underwent two groups of upper limb RT by dumbbells with different workload (5 kg and 7 kg). The lower limb group underwent two groups of exercise trainings on an anaerobic fitness bicycle, of which each group included four times of 20 s trainings with the workload 225 W. The waveforms of arterial diameter and center-line velocity in the right common carotid artery were recorded by an ultrasonic Doppler before and right after treatments. The arterial stiffness and associated hemodynamic parameters were calculated and analyzed. The statistical results demonstrated that there existed no significant differences in the systolic, mean, diastolic blood pressure and the heart rate for the upper limb group before and after training. For the lower limb group, however, the systolic blood pressure and the heart rate significantly increased from baseline after training while the mean blood pressure and the diastolic blood pressure remained not significantly changed. The pressure-strain elastic modulus and the arterial stiffness beta-index significantly increased right after high intensity of upper limb RT. On the contrary, the lower limb RT had no effect on pressure-strain elastic modulus and the arterial stiffness beta-index. It was concluded that an acute high intensity of upper limb RT increased the carotid arterial stiffness in young healthy male subjects, but moderate intensity of upper limb RT and lower limb RT had no effect.