March 12, 2022 — A new study in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension tells us that roughly half of youth seeking obesity care have high blood pressure. This medical fact puts us squarely in the middle of a sensitive subject that arouses strong emotions. These emotions have their roots in the bias attached to obesity and the stigma that […]
December 7, 2021 — We’re on our way to enduring two years of this pandemic, and it’s still killing more than five thousand people daily – more than a thousand in the U.S. alone. But, as each of us has learned, that’s not all. Coping with the pandemic has brought stresses that are showing up in our physical and […]
August 27, 2021 — Over the last three decades, high blood pressure has doubled around the world, driven in large part by obesity and poverty. These conclusions come from a new study published this week in Lancet. Obesity, a key risk factor for hypertension, is growing all over the world. But high income countries have been able to control […]
September 17, 2020 — Let’s face facts. We’re losing ground in control of blood pressure and thus in a key measure of heart health. A new study in JAMA last week documented a decline in U.S. rates of well-controlled blood pressure in 2018. This is a reversal of positive trends that spanned decades. This comes before the health impact […]
December 22, 2019 — We’ve seen people get quite red in the face when they expound on the how toxic sugar is. Or on the necessity of taxing sugar sweetened beverages. So perhaps arguments about the subject of sugar are raising blood pressure. But no, contrary to a press release from the University of Toronto, sugar itself does not […]
October 8, 2019 — Hypertension is a significant problem for older adults. But now, it’s becoming a concern for children and youth. A new study in JAMA Pediatrics tells us that the global prevalence of high blood pressure is rising in children and youth. Mainly, it’s because rates of childhood obesity are rising around the world. Eight Times More […]
December 22, 2018 — Among American adults, 29 percent have high blood pressure. Less than half of them have it under control. But more than three quarters of them take blood pressure meds. By contrast, only one quarter of American adults get the exercise that’s recommended for good health. However, a new study in the British Journal of Sports […]
November 15, 2017 — In case you weren’t paying attention, 130 is the new 140. Before Monday, the threshold for high blood pressure was 140 over 90. Now the consensus is that it’s 130 over 80. Boom. Nearly half the population has hypertension. How’d that happen? The Landmark SPRINT Study Truthfully, this change didn’t happen overnight. The impetus to […]
September 5, 2017 — The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has a rising concern about children with high blood pressure. So they have issued new guidelines that could lead to a million or more new diagnoses. Rising in Parallel with Severe Childhood Obesity The best estimates suggest that 3.5% of children in the U.S. have high blood pressure. That […]
February 15, 2016 — The failure to acknowledge obesity is so common in so many situations that it leads people to observe that obesity hides in plain sight. That was the conclusion of Kirsten Mueller and colleagues from the Mayo Clinic who assessed the accuracy of self-reports about weight status from a series of 508 internal medicine outpatients. Only […]
