If your partner is hypertensive, it is likely that you are (or will become) too

If your spouse or partner is hypertensive, chances are you are too. And next time maybe two of us will go to the doctor for a therapy that could be more effective if done as a couple. what emerges from one study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The researchers reached this conclusion by analyzing the blood pressure measurements of 3,989 US, 1,086 English, 6,514 Chinese and 22,389 Indian couples: the prevalence of both spouses or partners with high blood pressure was around 47% in England, 38% in the United States, 21% in China and 20% in India. In short, faithful to the promise in health and in illness.

How much do you risk?

But there's more. Compared to wives married to husbands without high blood pressure, those related to hypertension were 9% more likely to have high blood pressure in the United States and England, 19% in India and 26% in China. Within each country, similar associations were observed for husbands. Hypertension is more common in the United States and England, but these higher figures could be due to a cultural reason: in China and India there is a strong belief in staying together as a family, he said. Peiyi Lu, co-author of the study, fellow in Epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Participants were considered to have hypertension if they answered affirmatively to the question about a history of high blood pressure or if they had one of the following conditions: systolic (maximum) blood pressure greater than 140 mmHg or diastolic (minimum) blood pressure greater than 90 mmHg when measured at the doctor's office or pharmacy.

At the origin of other disorders

These maximum and minimum blood pressure values, to which we all refer, were chosen based on the evidence, emerging from various controlled and randomized clinical studies, that the treatment of patients with blood pressure higher than these indications is useful for improving their state of health , explains Roberto Pedretti, director of the Cardiovascular Department at the IRCSS MultiMedica in Sesto San Giovanni (Milan) and member of the Board of Directors of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology. Hypertension was the leading determinant of mortality globally in 2015, with approximately 10 million deaths. It is important to note that, despite the progress in diagnosis and treatment over the last 30 years, the maximum above 140 mmHg continues to determine the majority of mortality and disability due to ischemic heart disease (4.9 million), hemorrhagic stroke (2.0 million ) and ischemic stroke (1.5 million).

Couple therapy

The results of the study open the way to the possibility of considering couple-based approaches for the diagnosis and management of hypertension, such as couple screening or joint participation in ad hoc programs. Interventions aimed at spouses can be particularly effective, he said Bethany Barone Gibbs, associate professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at West Virginia University's School of Public Healthas well as chair of the drafting committee of the Association's 2021 Statement on Physical Activity as a Critical Component of First-Line Treatment for Elevated Blood Pressure or Cholesterol.

The benefit of mutual influence

In 2020, according to the American Heart Association, almost 120,000 deaths were primarily attributable to hypertension and from 2017 to 2020, 122.4 million (46.7%) U.S. adults had high blood pressure. According to the Italian Society of Arterial Hypertension, in our country high blood pressure affects 33% of men and 31% of women. Furthermore, 19% of men and 14% of women are in a risk condition, with borderline blood pressure values. So more than 15 million Italians have hypertension, says Pedretti. Considering the increase in this disorder among older adults in the world, the high presence of hypertension in couples, as demonstrated in the study presented, suggests that promoting “two-way” interventions may be important because health behaviors become similar over time and the mutual influence of spouses on health can be a winning strategy.

How to lower blood pressure

Hypertension among the main factors cardiovascular risk editable.
demonstrated that a reduction of 10 mmHg in systolic blood pressure and 5 mmHg in diastolic blood pressure are associated with a 20% decrease in all major cardiovascular events, a 10-15% decrease in all-cause mortality, a 35% decrease in stroke, 20% for coronary events and 40% for heart failure, concludes the expert. The most effective lifestyle changes concern nutrition, physical activity, smoking, management of chronic stress, maintaining a good network of social relationships over time, and sleeping at least seven hours a night. Changing them may not be easy and most patients may also require pharmacological treatment to achieve therapeutic goals. However, changing your lifestyle together can be simpler: Encouraging each other can help in times of difficulty by encouraging the building of new habits. moreover, it is intuitive that if within a couple, for example, the decision to stop smoking, to eat healthily and to carry out regular physical activity is typical of only one of the two, with the other continuing with incorrect habits, the probability of failure increases significantly.

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