High blood Pressure Increased Considerably Higher

Nov, 2022 - By WMR

According to a recent study, those in the US who already have high blood pressure had an increase during the first eight months of the Covid-19 epidemic.

When a person has high blood pressure, their blood's power presses against the blood vessel walls, which reduces the effectiveness of their heart. The heart and vessels must exert more effort. High blood pressure left untreated will gradually damage the arteries, increasing the likelihood of a heart attack or stroke.

According to the researchers of the new study, which was released on Tuesday in the journal Hypertension, well-controlled blood pressure is the main modifiable risk factor.

One of the most thorough analyses of blood pressure changes since the start of the epidemic, according to the US National Institutes of Health, which assisted in funding the study.

The researchers compared the blood pressure readings from August 2018 to January 2020 with those from April 2020 to January 2021 after reviewing the data of more than 137,000 persons with high blood pressure. The data came from Ochsner Health in New Orleans, Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The participants were 66 years old on average. 30% of them were Black, and more than half were women.

There is an upper number, or systolic, for the measurement. Diastolic pressure is the pressure generated when the heart is at rest in between beats, and systolic pressure measures the force of blood as it pumps from the heart into the arteries. A systolic blood pressure of more than 140 mmHg and a diastolic blood pressure of more than 90 mmHg are considered high blood pressure.

In the trial, the patients' systolic and diastolic values increased on average by 1.30 and 1.79 mmHg, respectively