Reflex control of blood pressure during exercise.

The exercise stimuli exert a powerful drive to elevate blood pressure. This may be facilitated by spinal sympatho-sympathetic reflexes arising from the heart and aorta. The role of the Bainbridge reflex as a feed-forward mechanism in exercise remains unclear. Other, homeostatic, reflexes may modulate the pressor effects of the exercise stimuli. The balance of evidence strongly suggests that the arterial baroreceptors are still able to restrain disturbances of blood pressure during exercise, even though their control of heart rate is modified. Vagally innervated cardiopulmonary, and especially left ventricular, receptors may also subserve buffer reflexes in exercise, but whether their thresholds are reached has not been determined.