Gaby
In the past, people treated the link between marriage and high blood pressure as a joke. Researchers didn’t consider it worthy of serious investigation.
High blood pressure, despite its subtle symptoms, can be life-threatening. Approximately 1.28 billion people worldwide have hypertension. Recently the disease has been affecting younger people: more and more people in their 20s and 30s are developing high blood pressure. Only half of those with hypertension seek treatment. Those who don’t are at increased risk of heart attack and stroke.
A West Virginia University study — reported by the Daily Mail — found that married people were nine percent more likely to have high blood pressure if their spouse did.
What Scientists Discovered
The university team set out to investigate whether husbands and wives, who often share interests, living conditions, lifestyles, and health status, also share high blood pressure.
The researchers analyzed blood pressure readings from 1,086 English couples, 6,514 Chinese couples, 22,389 Indian couples, and 3,989 couples from the United States.
Participants were considered to have hypertension if their blood pressure exceeded 140/90 mm Hg.
The measurements showed about 47 percent of English couples, 21 percent of Chinese couples, 20 percent of Indian couples, and more than 38 percent of U.S. couples had high blood pressure.
Moreover, if one spouse had high blood pressure, the other’s chance of having hypertension was nine percent higher than if their spouse did not.
Bethany Barone Gibbs, an associate professor at the West Virginia University School of Public Health, said, “If your spouse has hypertension, you’re likely to have it too.”
Based on the findings, the researchers suggested diagnosing and treating high blood pressure at the couple level instead of treating partners individually.
The study’s results were published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
