Healthy BMI Prevents High Blood Pressure

Body mass index (BMI) is positively associated with both systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP). Weight loss significantly reduces blood pressure (BP),⁶^-⁸ suggesting that BMI is not merely a marker of factors associated with high BP but is causally associated.

Being overweight or obese increases your risk of developing high blood pressure. In fact, your blood pressure rises as your body weight increases. Losing even 10 pounds can lower your blood pressure—and losing weight has the biggest effect on those who are overweight and already have hypertension.

Keeping your weight under control, from childhood through middle age, can offset high blood pressure in later years a new study shows.

Research About Weight Control

In the study from Great Britain, researchers tracked more than 3,000 men and women born in 1946. Each was regularly contacted since birth, and various tests, including blood pressure and body mass index (BMI, a measure of body fat through weight for height), -- were done at ages 36, 43, and 53.

Researchers also factored in each person's birth weight and their father's job in their early years. Typically, this is an indicator used to assess the child's nutrition while growing up. The researchers looked to see if birth weight, long suspected of influencing blood pressure later in life, had an effect on increasing blood pressure during a person's lifetime.

They found that high BMI throughout life had "a strong effect" on high blood pressure between ages 36 to 53, reports researcher Rebecca Hardy, PhD, an epidemiologist with the Royal Free and University College Medical School in London.

Weight Control Is Key

"These findings suggest that weight control throughout life is key to prevention of [high] blood pressure during middle age," writes Hardy.

The study also showed that in men, the lowest birth weight groups consistently had the highest systolic blood pressures. In women, this association of low birth weight leading to higher systolic blood pressures was not evident until women reached the age of 42.

BMI and Blood Pressure

The systolic blood pressure is the upper numbers of a blood pressure reading and is the force that the heart pumps against when it is beating. Higher systolic blood pressures are associated with more distress to the functioning heart and therefore heart disease.

Adults at all ages who were children from a manual social class had higher blood pressures than those raised in a nonmanual social class.

Understanding the mechanism linking the childhood socioeconomic environment and adult BMI may make prevention strategies more effective writes Hardy.

Frequently Asked Questions

There is a clearly established link between obesity and hypertension. The accumulation of excess adipose tissue initiates a cascade of events that give rise to an elevated blood pressure; obesity-induced hypertension is a common pathway in both children and adults.

(Reuters Health) - Though previous research has suggested high blood pressure may be more dangerous for thinner people, a new study finds the cardiovascular disease risks are similar – and high - for the lean, overweight and the obese.