The meta-analysis evaluated nine randomized, controlled trials using Transcendental Meditation as a primary intervention for hypertensive patients. The practice of Transcendental Meditation was associated with approximate reductions of 4.7 mm systolic blood pressure and 3.2 mm diastolic blood pressure.
]]>What’s more, researchers found, the combination of high stress and elevated blood pressure was twice as common among African-American women versus white women. They say the findings may help explain why black women are at particular risk of having a low-birthweight baby.
In the study, which appears in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers followed 170 white and African-American women who had their blood pressure and stress levels measured at different points during pregnancy.
]]>???Research shows that some 73 million people in the U.S. have high blood pressure, yet many of them don??™t even know it. And among those that do, a large number are not taking the medications they need to control it,” says Dr. Christopher Granger, a cardiologist at Duke University Medical Center. ???We??™ve discovered that these patients are getting highly variable treatment. Moreover, we also found out that we aren??™t doing a very good job following up with these folks once they leave the hospital,??? he adds.
Granger and colleagues at nearly two dozen institutions around the country created a special registry to find out what happens to patients with acute, severe hypertension ??“ those with blood pressure readings above 160/110 ??“ when they come to an emergency department or critical care setting for treatment.
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Summary Background Data
Severe obesity is associated with multiple comorbidities, particularly hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus, that may affect life expectancy.
Because chronic stress responses involve actual physiological changes to body systems and organs, a good bit of attention has been paid to acute physiological stress responses and how they might possibly lead to subsequent chronic stress responses (McEwen and Stellar, 1993).
]]>Each item was assigned what Holmes and Rahe called a Life Change Unit score based upon the item’s relative severity with reference to ‘death of a spouse.’ Research employing the Social Readjustment Rating Scale has demonstrated an association between the number of significant stressful life events and incidence of a number of psychological disorders and medical diseases (Brown and Harris, 1989; Horowitz et al.,1977).
]]>Additionally, transactional theories of stress suggest that stress responses can serve as new stressors that elicit more intense stress responses. For example, if an individual responds to interpersonal conflict (a stressor) by drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes (an acute behavioral stress response), these behavioral responses may become new stressors that warrant additional stress responses.
]]>The onset of chronic diseases, at times resulting in fatal outcomes, is quite prevalent following the loss of significant sources of social support, like the loss of a spouse. In order to examine the role of this type of stress??“stress response relation, several investigators have taken these questions into the laboratory. Laboratory investigations of social support have demonstrated that the magnitude of an acute stress response can be significantly reduced by simply having a supportive friend present during the stress presentation (Kamarck, Annunziato, and Amateau, 1995; Uchino, Cacioppo, and Kiecolt-Glaser, 1996).
]]>A striking example of this appeared on television during Hurricane Andrew in which the high winds leveled two neighbors’ homes with no loss of life. A news reporter interviewed the middle-aged fathers from both families who were standing in front of slabs of concrete that were once their respective Palm Beach houses.
One man was crying profusely, exclaiming that he had lost everything he had worked for all his life, while the other calmly expressed his thanks that everyone in his family was safe, even the dog.
]]>We all know people who seem to possess the ability to cope with life’s most challenging stressors (like becoming quadriplegic or losing the family home in a hurricane) without apparent distress; we also know others who experience extreme distress if they are five minutes late for an appointment.
]]>Although we may not be able to influence these variables, many of these factors have been shown to influence the magnitude and patterning of physiological stress responses observed under conditions in which we are exposed to standard environmental stressors.
]]>Further, in order to integrate the important facets from the literature on the stress??“health relation, it is clear that an interactive or transactional model would be necessary.
]]>Researchers examining the influence of stress upon health can be categorized into three groups: those that have focused on stress as a response, those that have focused on stress as a stimulus, and those that have adopted transactional or interaction models incorporating both stimulus and response components.
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