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Healthy weight behavior influences BP later in life

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John N. Booth III

Maintaining a healthy weight behavior for 25 years may reduce the risk for hypertension in young adulthood and middle age, according to new data from the CARDIA study presented at the American Heart Association Council on Hypertension, AHA Council on Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease, American Society of Hypertension Joint Scientific Sessions.

“[These] data [suggest] that body weight is very important in terms of maintaining a normal blood pressure from early and into middle adulthood,” John N. Booth III, PhD, postdoctoral fellow of the AHA’s Strategically Focused Hypertension Research Network at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said in a press release.

Researchers analyzed health behaviors, including healthy body weight, never smoking, up to seven alcoholic drinks per week for women and up to 14 for men, at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week, and a healthy diet, among 4,630 patients aged 18 to 30 years in 1985 and 1986.

Booth and colleagues measured BP and health behaviors eight times during a 25-year follow-up.

According to the main findings:

• Those who maintained an optimal BMI were more likely to have moderate-stable, elevated-stable or moderate/elevated-increasing vs. low-stable BP burden.
• Never smoking and maintaining no or moderate alcohol consumption were linked to less of a BP increase by middle age.
• Optimal physical activity and following the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet were not associated with mid-BP burden.
• Those who adhered to at least four health behaviors were 27% more likely to have a normal BP than increasing BP from early adulthood through middle age (OR = 0.73; 95% CI, 0.39-1.38).

“These results provide evidence that what we may want to do is focus on how we can create interventions that will enable individuals to maintain a normal body weight throughout their lifetimes. The other behaviors we studied may play an important role since they can influence body weight,” Booth said in the release. – by Dave Quaile

Reference:

Booth JN, et al. Poster P149. Presented at: AHA Council on Hypertension Scientific Sessions; Sept. 14-17, 2017; San Francisco.

Disclosure: Booth reports he receives research grants and support from the NHLBI.