Whether sick or healthy, rich or poor, husband and wife will always be together" - when loving couples prepare this classic wedding vow, they don't seem to think of another point, that is, the symptoms of high blood pressure between couples also seem to "accompany each other".
A new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association by Dr. Chihua Li, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan, suggests that some people develop high blood pressure as they age, and that their spouses' blood pressure may also increase.
Many people know that high blood pressure is common in middle-aged and older adults, but we were surprised to find that many older couples in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and India have high blood pressure. In a press release to the American Heart Association (AHA), Chihua Li said, "In the United States, for example, more than 35 percent of couples over the age of 50 have high blood pressure. ”
High blood pressure is a common condition in the United States, and the risk of this condition increases with age. According to the American Heart Association, nearly half (about 47%) of U.S. adults had high blood pressure in 2020, and the disease caused 120,000 deaths that year.
In the new study, Lee and colleagues looked at the incidence of hypertension in nearly 34,000 couples worldwide: 4,000 American couples, 1,100 British couples, more than 6,500 Chinese couples and more than 22,000 Indian couples.
The research team collected these data between 2015 and 2019.
Jithin Sam Varghese, co-principal investigator of the project, said the team "wanted to find out whether married couples — when their interests, living environment, Xi and health conditions — also developed high blood pressure."
The study seems to support this view: according to an AHA press release, "the rate of spouses or partners in the UK with high blood pressure is 47%;"38% in the United States;21% in China;20 per cent in India".
Moreover, this result has nothing to do with the couple's income, age, education level or length of marriage.