A new study found that high blood pressure might be among the many things couples share.
The study found that when one partner has high blood pressure there’s a good chance the other person does too.
When doctors see patients, they usually see them as an individual. Not as a couple with their spouse. The new study found that doctors might be wasting two opportunities when they do that: A chance to find high blood pressure in their spouse and a way to manage blood pressure as a couple instead of an individual.
In the paper published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, nearly 34,000 heterosexual couples in the United States, the U.K., China, and India, provided information on their blood pressure and other health characteristics. This allowed researchers to see how common it was for high blood pressure to exist in both partners.
In the United States, both partners in a couple had high blood pressure 38% of the time. In fact, if one person in a couple was found to have high blood pressure, the other was between 6% to 9% more likely to also have high blood pressure.
Emory University Researcher Dr. Jithin Sam Varghese was one of the lead authors of the study. Varghese said that married couples are more likely to share several lifestyle behaviors.
“You may have certain dietary patterns that you follow, a certain activity patterns that you follow, you may be more likely to sleep for around the same amount of time and all these may contribute to a similar burden of hypertension in both pairs of the couple,” Varghese said.
He said if your spouse has hypertension it is worth it to get yourself screened for high blood pressure regularly. You should also consider joint management strategies and work to hold each other accountable.
The study shows how important it is to think about the lifestyle factors that could be contributing to your hypertension, especially if your spouse also has high blood pressure.