Around the world, over a billion people have a problem known as high blood pressure or hypertension. A lot of these people live in countries that are not very rich.
High blood pressure happens when your blood pushes too hard against the walls of your arteries, which are the big tubes that carry blood around your body.
When we talk about blood pressure, we use two numbers. The first number tells us how hard the blood pushes when your heart beats.
The second number tells us how hard the blood pushes when your heart is resting. Doctors say you have high blood pressure if these numbers are too high on two different days.
High Blood Pressure and Heart Disease
High blood pressure is a big reason why people get heart disease all around the world. Studies have shown that as blood pressure goes up, so does the chance of getting heart disease or dying from it.
This is especially true for the first number (the systolic blood pressure). However, we don’t know if the same thing is true for the second number (the diastolic blood pressure).
Another thing we don’t know is if having high blood sugar makes any difference. High blood sugar is also linked to heart disease.
But we’re not sure if it changes the relationship between high blood pressure and heart disease.
The Research Project
A group of researchers led by Dr. Kazuya Fujihara and Prof. Hirohito Sone decided to explore these questions.
They were curious about the new guidelines from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association.
These guidelines say that a blood pressure higher than 130/80 is high. They also define a normal level as less than 120/80.
But, there’s not a lot of information on whether having slightly high blood pressure leads to heart disease or stroke depending on your blood sugar levels.
This was the first study to look at how blood pressure and blood sugar levels affect heart disease and stroke in real-world conditions.
They looked at the health records of over 800,000 people in Japan. They divided these people based on their blood sugar levels and then looked at their blood pressure.
The Findings
What they found was interesting. They noticed that as blood pressure went up, so did the chances of getting heart disease or a stroke. This was true for people with normal, borderline, and high blood sugar levels.
They also found out that higher the second number (diastolic blood pressure), the higher the risk of heart disease and stroke.
They also noticed that high blood sugar and high blood pressure together increased the chances of heart disease and stroke more than either of them alone.
This is very important because people in Asia have different health patterns compared to people in the West. They have less heart disease but more strokes.
They also have less obesity but different types of diabetes. So, this information can help create better health guidelines for Asians.
Dr. Fujihara explained that recent studies showed that keeping the first blood pressure number less than 120 could reduce the chances of heart disease and death.
Their study showed that it’s important to improve lifestyle, like reducing salt intake, even if blood pressure is just a bit higher than normal.
However, they also said that more studies need to be done to confirm these findings. This could help doctors decide the best blood pressure goals for people with high blood sugar levels.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies about a new cause of high blood pressure, and most widely used high blood pressure drug may harm heart health.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies that exercise in middle age reversed worrisome heart failure, and results showing this drug combo can cut risk of stroke and heart attack by half.
The study was published in Diabetes Care.
Copyright © 2023 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
