A New Warning Sign for Early Heart Disease

 Health Envoy's Blog

• By Dr. Sanjay Gupta

   

 Even if your blood pressure is normal, if it’s rising year over year, you could be at greater risk of developing early heart disease.

You probably know whether your blood pressure is normal or it’s high. But you probably don’t know whether it’s changing year over year. That is not something doctors have paid a lot of attention to.
A recent study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests they should. It found that if a person’s blood pressure rises steadily through his or her 20’s and 30’s, even if it is within the normal range, that person is at greater risk of developing heart disease before age 50.

For most people, blood pressure stays steady throughout life. But the researchers found some people have steadily rising blood pressure before they hit middle age. Their blood pressure may not rise into the elevated zone during those years, so it is unlikely to set off alarm bells.

But the new study found that rising blood pressure when a person is young is reason for concern.
Norrina Allen, PhD, at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University studied blood pressure patterns of almost 5,000 men and women between the ages of 18 and 30, tracking their pressure over a quarter century.
“We now know that what happens in your 20’s and 30’s impacts your risk for heart disease,” said Dr. Allen.
Steadily rising blood pressure could be a warning sign of heart disease.
  
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