What are your odds of developing high blood pressure? Your risk is affected by many factors including, perhaps, your address.
In a study published in the January issue of the journal Hypertension, researchers looked at data from 3,436 adults. The participants lived in Birmingham, Alabama; Chicago, Illinois; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Oakland, California. When they were 18 to 30 years old in the mid-1980s, an examination found that they didn't have high blood pressure.
The researchers looked to see how many developed high blood pressure in the next 20 years. When the participants were 45 years old, on average, 34.5 percent of black men and 37.6 percent of black women had developed high blood pressure, also called hypertension. By contrast, 21.4 percent of white men and 12.3 percent of white women had progressed to hypertension.
But the researchers found that rates of hypertension varied by city, too. More than one-third of Birmingham residents developed hypertension, compared to 19 percent of Minneapolis residents. When the researchers accounted for many factors that could have influenced this finding - including differences in obesity, family history, and blood pressure at the beginning of the study - people in Minneapolis were 40 percent less likely to develop high blood pressure than participants in Birmingham. People in Chicago and Oakland were 27 to 28 percent less likely.
The numbers of people with hypertension may help explain why deaths due to cardiovascular disease vary across the country, according to the researchers.
Experts already know that many factors can raise your risk of developing hypertension. Some of these you can change - but some are factors that you can't. They include:
- Older age
- African American heritage
- Being overweight
- A diet high in sodium
- Excessive alcohol use
- A sedentary lifestyle
- Smoking
- Having other people in your family with high blood pressure
Many people with high blood pressure don't even know they have it. If your health care provider hasn't checked you for high blood pressure in the past two years, now's a good time to ask for a blood pressure screening - no matter whether you live up north, down south, on a coast, or anywhere in-between.
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