Parents' Stress Gives Clue To Child's Hypertension
How parents
responded to stress may give clues to a child’s risk of developing hypertension,
researchers say.
The investigators
found that offspring of parents with high blood pressure react more negatively
to stressful situations, both in their behavior and physiology. That may
be partly because certain behaviors, such as conflict avoidance and inadequate
expression of feelings, are passed from one generation to the next, the
study authors said in the journal Health Psychology.
Nicole Frazer
of West Virginia University and her team looked at how college students
with and without hypertensive parents responded during stressful mental
activities. They measured the students’ heart rate and blood pressures
and examined their behavior.
The men and
women with hypertensive parents had higher resting heart rates than those
whose parents had normal blood pressure.
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