Stress at Work Doesn’t Cause High Blood Pressure

Raised blood pressure (hypertension) is one of the most common chronic health conditions that shortens life. Some people have fairly volatile blood pressure, which goes up at the sight of a doctor, a needle, or the boss – but that’s not the same as hypertension. However, there’s a popular belief that stress at work leads to hypertension. Now a comprehensive review has been published that suggests this is not the case.

In 2003 a rigorous study by a French group found no effect of job stress on the frequency of high blood pressure. In spite of this, the belief has persisted, and many people even change jobs to try to improve their cardiac health outlook. So Dr Samuel Mann of Cornell and New York-Presbyterian Hospital reviewed 48 publications on the topic. They included over 100,000 people. Most of the studies found no relationship between job stress and hypertension, and only a very weak association in the others. But many of the studies could be faulted, one way or the other, regarding their design or their reporting.

Although it seems clear that there’s no link between stress at work and high blood pressure disease, there’s no denying that battles with the boss or co-workers can lead to raised blood pressure lasting minutes or maybe an hour or two. Sand there does seem to be an association between stress at work and coronary artery disease – it’s just that hypertension isn’t the link between the two.

Comments

[Eduardo Ramirez]

Hi,

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regards,

Eduardo from maison de retraite