A while back, in a natural health-focused conference, I was once asked the question if we could catch high blood pressure from someone or if someone who had high blood pressure could infect others.
In that moment I kind of brushed it off as ridiculous. I made some kind of silly joke that made the crowd laugh but didn’t really answer the question. I frankly didn’t think of this as even a minor possibility.
But when I came home I began to think. Then I began to read and study. And then my opinion began to change a little. This really wasn’t as silly of a question as I first thought. Guess the joke was on me.
One thing that tipped my curiosity was that although scientists can’t nail more than 3-5 blood pressure points on genetic causes (not enough to cause hypertension), studies have shown that high blood pressure runs in families. If your father or mother had high blood pressure, you’re much more likely to develop it yourself.
How can this be if genes are not to blame?
If you’ve been following this newsletter for a while, you’ll know that high blood pressure is always caused by some kind of stress. The stress can be emotional (conflicts with spouse), mental (trying to understand rocket science), physical (physical activity, diseases) or sensory (traffic noise, TV). Most often more than one type of stress is usually at play to cause chronic hypertension.
So the only way for high blood pressure to be contagious is if at least two or three out of the four types of stress were contagious. Is that possible?
Physical Stress:
Since a contagion is usually connected to something physical, let’s first look at how the physical stress causing high blood pressure can be picked up from other people.
Stress factors that are often overlooked are simple diseases such as the common flu. Cortisol levels can rise drastically for many people when they catch the flu. Long lasting sickness can therefore cause the same symptoms as chronic physical stress, which again causes high blood pressure in the long run. Many other diseases (especially pain related) cause a rise in cortisol and stress reactions as well.
But let’s look at health symptoms that are not caused by flu and viruses.
A Harvard study conducted in 2011 revealed that a person’s chance of becoming obese rose 57% if a friend of the same sex was obese. If the friend was close the chances rose 171%. The researchers therefore conducted that obesity was contagious through social bonds.
Being overweight and obese is, of course, one of the underlying causes for physical stress causing high blood pressure. It’s also safe to say that the lifestyle choices that cause obesity (poor diet, lack of physical activity) will also cause high blood pressure. And if obesity is contagious, the lifestyle choices are contagious as well.
Emotional Stress:
Many of us have had the “pleasure” to work for a highly intense, stress-creating boss. One day he was happy and patting you on the back, the other day he was screaming and whining about nothing. There didn’t seem to be any logical pattern to this.
And mostly likely the intense boss was constantly complaining about his blood pressure.
Guess what? The strain of working with such a boss caused you emotional stress. And your blood pressure rose. And not only yours, everyone else’s in the workplace. What’s more, even if the high-octane boss left the company, the emotional stress culture was still there. Unless someone “cured” the work place with conscious intervention, new people coming in would also develop high blood pressure.
There are many types of careers and jobs that have a higher-than-average number of people with high blood pressure. Even if they’re otherwise healthy, it’s the emotional culture of these workplaces that spread the disease.
But it doesn’t just have to be the workplace. A difficult spouse, friends or any other kind of associates can trigger emotional reactions in people around them.
We all tend to react differently to different situations. However, friends and family members tend to have somewhat similar trends in emotional reactivity. And high reactivity tends to cause high blood pressure. Again we could call this contagious.
Mental Stress:
The brain is often ignored when talking about the flow of blood throughout the body. We know we need blood into the legs to fuel our muscles when we run but we forget we need blood flow to the brain when solving difficult tasks.
Although the brain is a relatively small organ, it uses 20-40% of all the oxygen-rich blood flowing through the body. When faced with big mental challenges, the brain requires much more blood than when resting. And just like it is healthy for our blood pressure to rise when we run, it is also healthy when it rises when we’re faced with difficult mental challenges.
But just like it’s not healthy or possible to sprint for a long time, the brain needs rest between bouts of challenging times. We can focus on a challenge and then we have to give the brain a break.
There are many situations where people around us challenge us to constantly overload our brain. The workplace and school are examples; either the demanding boss/teacher or competition from co-workers/students.
Obsessing over difficult mental tasks is extremely draining for the brain and can cause long lasting mental and emotional high blood pressure. Whereas obsession is most often personal, groups can develop a group-obsession that is just as risky.
The final type of stress is…
Sensory Stress:
Several studies have proven that long lasting intensity on our senses causes high blood pressure. One example is the traffic noise in cities. Even people who have lived around traffic their whole lives are affected by this noise.
Watching TV can put strain on the senses causing high blood pressure. Even if you know the information is not real, your subconscious takes it partly as real. That’s why you may jump a little during a scary movie.
Walking around in large crowds, you’re looking at thousands of people per hour. Your subconscious is constantly working on the information from your senses (both causing both mental and sensory high blood pressure) figuring out if you should flee, fight or shake hands.
Some types of music also tend to cause a rise in blood pressure (hard rock) while other types (classical) actually lower blood pressure.
Where and how we choose to live is very strongly influenced by the people with whom we associate. In that way, if we choose environments with a lot of sensory stress factors, we could say we “caught” that from the environment in which we live.
Conclusion:
I live my life practicing self-responsibility. If I catch the flu, it’s not because the man sitting next to me had the flu, it’s because I haven’t been taking good enough care of my immune system to fight off the flu.
In the same way, environmental stress factors causing us to “catch high blood pressure” shouldn’t be blamed on anyone else. Instead, we can strengthen our emotional and mental immune system and make the best life choices for ourselves.
The best way I’ve learned to fight off all four stress factors causing high blood pressure are simple blood pressure exercises. These exercises kind of reboot our system bringing the blood pressure down to normal and keeping it there.
You can learn more about the blood pressure exercises here…
But first, what do you think? Do you think high blood pressure is contagious and if so, how?
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Blood Pressure is in the gene.
I think HBP could be contageous; like, a smile is contageous! People are going to take on a lot of their surroundings, noises, loud emissions, smells, attitudes, etc. There is also psychological noise, ie (did i leave the fans running; did I turn the oven off:, did I lock the back door; what if I run out of my meds; I need to complete my project and get it turned in) psychological noise is addictive, and can be stopped. It takes a concentrated effort to stop it. the method is called “thought-stopping” and there are many ways to do this.
There is also a stress called “Eustress”, which is considered “good stress”. Nevertheless, it is a stress; like a party, or a wedding are great things, but are stresses, the type called eustress. An award dinner could be eustress, though lovely and ego building. These could all cause HBP. It would be difficult to remove most stressing things from your environment. I can hear my neighbors ac, auto start, doors slamming, the garbage truck, our front door opening, one neighbor has a heavy equipment business; his machines often disturb the noise for blocks. I use psychological techniques to block these things, do a lot of thought stopping techniques (they are fun to do), run a large fan, and sometimes a small on nearer to me, for the movement of air, but I like the fans that make some steady noise. They sound much nicer than the “silent” sound machines, which are not silent. I use meditation, my own, tapes, breathing techniques, for HBP and for calming and peaceful feelings, a “light/sound machine” works great, and works on me for lengths of time,hours in fact. Look for them online. The best seller is the company which created them and makes them. The guarantees are not quite as satisfying from the companies which just sell them. I know of only one company making them, and I would have to go find mine, to look at it to see. They come with dark glasses (though you keep your eyes closed) and a small gadget that looks like a cheap small radio. They have 21 or 23 set programs, for sleeping, calming, test taking, activity, etc, and they work well, if used regularly. Practice, is what most things that work, cause them to work. taylor ps I loved this article, Christian
This article on blood pressure makes more common sense than anything that I have read in the last four years on the subject. I have traumatic blood pressure that developed after an auto accident that totaled my vehicle at no fault of mine as a young man ran a stop sign. He never was given a citation for breaking the law and causing my life to be a living hell for almost four years now. This was an eye opener for me as it is my choice to allow this to effect me or to move on and make my life count. Thanks for writing this just for me. Mary
Dear Mr. Goodman:
Your article on stress-related hypertension and the issue of “catching high blood pressure” provides an important overview to the matter.
By way of further information, “Two Hours of TV Raises Risk of Diabetes, Heart Disease and Death,” as explained in the Journal of the American Medical Association, June 15, 2011, which is based upon research by Harvard University School of Public Health.
For more details, especially related to mental and emotional dysfunctions caused by TV viewing — without the viewer being aware — check out the book, FOUR ARGUMENTS FOR THE ELIMINATION OF TELEVISION, by Jerry Mander, at a local library or most online book sellers.
Only those who have a burning desire to learn and underestand ideas and issues, and who are sincerely and seriously interested in learning and growing, will ever do so.
And that is a full-time job each person must decide to do or not do, depending on their own personal perspective.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Best regards,
Sterling
I have type A peersonality that I inheritd from my mother who had high blood pressure ard thus, I have high blood prssure. I have it under control with medication and your exercises. Thanks for the info.
Excellent article.Thanks for it.
You are right on target…Personally, we caught our "White Coat" from the RN who initially checked our pressure some 20 years ago…Now, when we enter into the "white coat environment" her "ghost" continues to be there…Our every day BP is perfect…and our health "shows It."We control it with exercise, healthy eating and drinking habits, meditation and staying "above" worry nd stress"..We appreciate what you guys are dong to encourage all of us who have been "pressured" by the "Whitecoats"..
What an interesting topic, while i was reading what you had to say Mr Goodman on the subject I came to the realisation that indeed most of all you said on the subject i can truly relate to. For instance I love sci-fi tv series movies etc while watching Deep Space Nine one of my favourite series of the Star Trek serious i noticed i get very aggitated, even a bit angry and i never knew why. It’s the music at the beggining and end of the dvd that was driving my blood pressure to go up. I never watch tv any more as the ad’s (commercials) upset me so much and bring up my blood pressure and i start yelling at the ads for no reason except that they are repeated over and over. Where I live I can hear the traffic noise from the Highway some distance away and the Airport is also some distance away and it drives me insane. I always know what time it is by these plane take offs especially just before midnight and just before 6am when you have about 4 plan take offs one after the other. I was also in a very stressful job for about 6yrs until I was made redundant about a year and a half ago. I became very ill and after main meals during the day i would be on the floor screaming in agony every day for about two years running. At the same time i was in a relationship which was not helping my stress situation at all, the less said about that the better. Now ever since i stopped taking my medication about 4 months ago and I am no longer in a relationship and I am unemployed I feel so much better. I am eating less as i tend to love food, i am exercising about 30 minutes a day. Eating the right foods and avoiding addative foods and also have cut down on meat products. So these stresses were definelty playing havoc with my Blood Pressure of this i am sure. THanks for the article.
Good article
but I think high blood pressure is in the genes. Two people can be exposed to the same stressful situation but only one of them may develop increased blood pressure.
THIS JUST WHAT THE DR.ORDERED!I TRULY THANK YOU!SO I MUST ACT ON IT NOW.
I think if you start accumulating plaque at an early agem which is quite possible. The arteries little by little start to close off and the blood pressure begins to start being high because of the force that is needed to get the blood through. I have a hereditary form of Magnesium Deficiencym where the kidney’s dump the magnesium into the urine and does not reach the cells properly. My dad had a heart attack at 56, His mother died at 49, and a brother who died at 47. All his sisters ha heart problems also. I do not eat like I should have heart problems but I’ve had bypass in 2007 and a heart attack in 2009. and sky high blood pressure for 7 months. I was in the h hospital every month to a month and a half with it at 240’s over 120’s. I was told out the 3 arteries in the legs, two are completely blocked and the 3rd was 98% blocked which was turning by toe black prior to getting it reamed out by a Vascular Surgeon. I believe every one should educate themselves on Magnesium Deficiency since there has to be a certain ratio of Calcium to Magnesium in the cells. Look up Magnesium Deficiency on the internet and get the book The Magnesium MIiracle by Dr. Carolyn Dean on Amazon.com. You will be amazed! Just another possibility for high blood pressure.