Kids' High Blood Pressure On The Rise

Experts: High Blood Pressure In Children And Teens Becoming More Common, Reversing A Lengthy Trend

(WebMD)  Experts today warned that high blood pressure has become more common in U.S. kids and teens.

The finding is a call to action, says researcher Rebecca Din-Dzietham, MD, of Morehouse School of Medicine.

"Unless this upward trend in high blood pressure is reversed, we could be facing an explosion of new cardiovascular disease cases in young adults and adults. ... We need to act now," she says in a news release.

High blood pressure makes heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, and other serious health conditions more likely. The fear is that if high blood pressure starts in childhood, those problems may start earlier in life.

High Blood Pressure in Children
Din-Dzietham and colleagues reviewed nearly 40 years of government data on high blood pressure (hypertension) and prehypertension in children and teens aged 8 to 17.

During that time, most kids and teens didn't have high blood pressure or borderline high blood pressure. But the trends tell a different story.

The children got their blood pressure, height, weight, and waist circumference checked.

From 1963 to 1988, high blood pressure and borderline high blood pressure became rarer among kids and teens. But after 1988, that trend reversed and has been climbing ever since.

For instance, from 1988 to 1994, 2.7 percent of kids and teens studied had high blood pressure and 7.7 percent had prehypertension.

From 1999 to 2002, the percentage of kids with high blood pressure had risen to 3.7 percent and the percentage with prehypertension had reached 10 percent.

Those increases followed about a decade after childhood obesity started becoming more common, note the researchers.

Abdominal obesity - extra weight around the waist - was particularly problematic when it came to blood pressure, but BMI (body mass index, which relates height to weight) also tied extra pounds to higher blood pressure.

The findings appear in today's online edition of the journal Circulation.

[lonestartnow]

The trends do indeed tell a story. As co-founder of the LoneStart Wellness Initiative, we work with employer/ employee groups as well as individuals, and on a daily basis see the impact overweight and obesity has on the family--including the children. Nationally, obesity rates have nearly quintupled among 6 -to 11-year olds and tripled among teens and children ages 2 to 5 since the 1970s. Children ages 8 to 12 see an average of 21 television ads each day for candy, snacks, cereal and fast food, more than 7,600 a year. And, about 1 percent of U.S. children under the age of 7 (more than 283,000 children) are unable to properly fit in a child safety seat. The vast majority of that number are 3-year-olds who weigh more than 40 pounds. High blood pressure is a valid fear and problem, but by addressing overweight and obesity, we can go far to address the issue of rising blood pressure and related conditions as well.