There is a belief that proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation exercises cause cardiac overload as blood pressure in immediately influenced by exercise but Pereira concluded in his research that proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation exercises with minimum repetitions are safe for hypertensive or cardiovascular patients because in his study there is no increase in blood pressure in older women after performing three different types of PNF exercises. Pereira discovered that rhythmic initiation , dynamic reversals , and combination of isotonic techniques did not raise blood pressure levels, thus it is recommended to use up to five repeats of repetition maximum . One study observed at the effects of passive and modified proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF)stretching techniques on acute systolic and diastolic blood pressure responses. All PNF treatments were beneficial in increasing Range of motion, as we all know.
PNF improves Range Of Motion while avoiding an increase in Systolic blood pressure in one or two trials, but increases Systolic blood pressure in a third trial. Blood pressure rises by 40% with conventional exercise programmers and because PNF involves near-maximal resistance,researchers anticipated a considerable rise in blood pressure during PNF execution. It was discovered that elderly subjects could not readily execute more than five to seven repetitions of PNF exercises, which has also been shown by others. Due to the low repetition number of each movement pattern, the results showed that PNF did not induce a high enough workload to increase blood pressure in the elderly.
