The Study
Hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, is strongly associated with heart disease, stroke and kidney disease. Nearly 50% of U.S. adults are hypertensive. In this interesting study, Harvard researchers wanted to find out how many of these cases could be prevented by healthy lifestyle choices.
This investigation pooled subjects from the Nurses’ Health Study, the Nurses’ Health Study II and the Health Professional Follow-up Study. Over 50,000 men and women had their lifestyle measured and were watched for over 27 years to see if they developed hypertension.
Here are the healthy lifestyle behaviors used in this study:
A BMI under 25.
Greater than 2.5 hours of moderate to vigorous physical activity each week.
Top 40 percentile adherence to the DASH diet.
No more than one alcohol containing drink per day.
The population attributable risk when following all of these factors was 44%. This means that if everyone in the cohort followed these habits, almost half of the cases of hypertension would not have happened.
European Journal Of Medicine 2025;132:55-56
Take Home Message
It appears that healthy lifestyle choices can prevent a very significant amount of hypertension risk. Eating right, exercising and maintaining a healthy weight is not always easy, but the payoff is tremendous.
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