[Photo/Xinhua]

People living with heart disease, high blood pressure or stroke may benefit from practicing traditional Chinese exercises such as Tai Chi, showed a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

"Traditional Chinese exercises are a low-risk, promising intervention that could be helpful in improving quality of life in patients with cardiovascular diseases -- the leading cause of disability and death in the world," study author Yu Liu, dean of the School of Kinesiology at Shanghai University of Sport in China, said in a statement.

"But the physical and psychological benefits to these patients of this increasingly popular form of exercise must be determined based on scientific evidence."

In the new study, the researchers reviewed 35 research articles, which included 2,249 cardiovascular disease patients from 10 countries.

They found Chinese exercises helped reduce the participants' systolic blood pressure, the top number, by more than 9.12 mm Hg, and diastolic blood pressure, the bottom number, by more than 5 mm Hg on average.

The study also revealed small, but statistically significant drops in the levels of bad cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein, and triglycerides.