High blood pressure: heart muscle more sensitive than expected
All content is checked by medical journalists.In the meantime, word has got around with most of them: Although high blood pressure does not hurt, it does promote cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks or strokes. However, the fact that even slight deviations from the recommended blood pressure values in young adults can have a significant impact on heart health in old age is new.
Almost half of all Germans suffer from high blood pressure, but only one in two knows about it. Many of them have genetic causes. For others, a lack of exercise, an unhealthy diet, obesity, smoking and stress create the breeding ground on which the widespread disease thrives. This is especially true of patients whose blood pressure climbs at a young age.
In addition to a healthy lifestyle, medication helps to bring blood pressure back into balance - in other words: to lower it as far as possible to a "normal" value defined by doctors of below 120/80 mmHg. Researchers have now found in a study that even so-called “highly normal” values, which are only slightly above the recommendations and are actually not yet considered to be high blood pressure, can damage the heart of young adults.
Adapt blood pressure values to age
If the blood pressure is between 130/85 and 139/89 mmHg, it is considered highly normal. For a long time, experts believed that only values above this increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases. That doesn't seem to be the case, at least not in all age groups. Because even values below this threshold are harmful to the heart health of young adults. “What is good for a 60-year-old doesn't have to be good for a 28-year-old,” says Prof. Joao Lima of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Heart muscle more sensitive than expected
During the 25-year study, the medical professionals examined 2,500 men and women several times. At the start of the investigation, they were between 18 and 30 years old. In addition to blood pressure, the researchers also determined blood lipids, blood sugar and BMI (Body Mass Index) of the participants and asked them about their lifestyle. The additional risk factors were then “removed” from the results using statistical methods in order to be able to concentrate fully on the connection between blood pressure and heart. The subjects were now divided into groups depending on their measured values and later compared with one another.
At the end of the study, a special ultrasound examination was carried out on the heart of the participants. Compared to participants with lower values, those with high diastolic values (lower blood pressure value) were 70 percent more likely to develop a certain form of heart failure. The heart muscle can still contract, but no longer relax properly. This reduces the heart's pumping capacity. Subjects whose systolic value (upper blood pressure value) was permanently elevated were 46 percent more likely to develop another form of cardiac insufficiency. In this case, the contraction, i.e. the contraction of the heart muscle, is disturbed.
Early blood pressure checks are recommended
"Our results show that the guideline values for so-called" high normal "blood pressure are too high for younger people," says Lima, summarizing the study results. The consequence is that affected young adults developed an incipient cardiac insufficiency in their middle years. It is therefore all the more important, the scientists recommend, to have blood pressure checked regularly at a young age and, if necessary, to take countermeasures in good time. (th)
Source:
Satoru Kishi, et al .: Cumulative Blood Pressure in Early Adulthood and Cardiac Dysfunction in Middle Age The CARDIA Study;J Am Coll Cardiol. 2015; 65: 2679-2687. doi: 10.1016 / j.jacc.2015.04.042
Press release from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from June 22nd, 2015
Tags: dental care smoking Diagnosis
