If you have high blood pressure, there’s a good chance your spouse has it too, a new study finds.
When researchers looked at data from middle-aged and older heterosexual couples in four countries around the world, they found a “high prevalence” of both the husband and wife experiencing hypertension, according to research published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
In the U.S., for example, more than a third of partners who were in their 50s or older, both had high blood pressure.
“We know that couples share the bathroom, they share their coffee, and now we’re learning they may actually share hypertension, or high blood pressure,” said NBC medical contributor Dr. Tara Narula in a TODAY segment on Dec. 6.
“You’re sharing a lot of the same lifestyle factors, and we know that what you do, how you live your life can really impact your blood pressure.”
The risk of high blood pressure rises as people get older, but the investigators were still surprised by the findings, said senior author Chihua Li, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, in a statement.
One possible explanation is that the health habits of spouses become similar over time, the paper noted.
“We wanted to find out if many married couples who often have the same interests, living environment, lifestyle habits and health outcomes may also share high blood pressure,” said study co-author Jithin Sam Varghese, Ph.D., an assistant research professor at the Emory Global Diabetes Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, in a statement.
The answer appears to be yes.
The paper looked at health data from almost 4,000 U.S. couples, more than 1,000 British couples, more than 6,500 Chinese couples and more than 22,000 Indian couples. All spouses were middle-aged or older, living in the same household and reported to be married or partnered to one another.
The highest prevalence of both spouses having high blood pressure was in England where 47% both had…
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