Lack of Sleep, High Blood Pressure

A March 2024 study by the American College of Cardiology said,

• “Based on the most updated data, the less you sleep—that is less than seven hours a day—the more likely you will develop high blood pressure in the future,”

• “We saw a trend between longer sleep durations and a greater occurrence of high blood pressure, but it was not statistically significant. Getting seven to eight hours of sleep, as is recommended by sleep experts, may be the best for your heart too.”

• “Getting too little sleep appears to be riskier in females,”

• “The difference is statistically significant, though we are not sure it’s clinically significant and should be further studied. What we do see is that lack of good sleep patterns may increase the risk of high blood pressure, which we know can set the stage for heart disease and stroke.”

• “Further research is required to evaluate the association between sleep duration and high blood pressure using more accurate methods like polysomnography, a method for evaluating sleep quality more precisely,” Hosseini said. “Moreover, the variations in reference sleep duration underline the need for standardized definition in sleep research to enhance the comparability and generalizability of findings across diverse studies.”

Blood pressure & cholesterol: less sitting

A June 2021 study at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania said,

• "The current American Heart Association guidelines for diagnosing high blood pressure and cholesterol recognize that otherwise healthy individuals with mildly or moderately elevated levels of these cardiovascular risk factors should actively attempt to reduce these risks. The first treatment strategy for many of these patients should be healthy lifestyle changes beginning with increasing physical activity," 

• "Increasing physical activity can help lower blood pressure and cholesterol, along with many other health benefits." 

• "Every little bit of activity is better than none,”

• "Even small initial increases of 5 to 10 minutes a day can yield health benefits."

• "In our world where physical activity is increasingly engineered out of our lives and the overwhelming default is to sit - and even more so now as the nation and the world is practicing quarantine and isolation to reduce the spread of coronavirus - the message that we must be relentless in our pursuit to 'sit less and move more' throughout the day is more important than ever,"

Fasting, blood pressure, gut microbiota

Fasting > gut health > lower blood pressure

An April 2021 study by Baylor College of Medicine said,

"Previous studies from our lab have shown that the composition of the gut microbiota in animal models of hypertension, such as the SHRSP (spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone rat) model, is different from that in animals with normal blood pressure,"

"This result told us that gut dysbiosis is not just a consequence of hypertension, but is actually involved in causing it," 

"This ground work led to the current study in which we proposed to answer two questions. First, can we manipulate the dysbiotic microbiota to either prevent or relieve hypertension? Second, how are the gut microbes influencing the animal's blood pressure?"

"Next, we investigated whether the microbiota was involved in the reduction of blood pressure we observed in the SHRSP rats that had fasted,"

"It was particularly interesting to see that the germ-free rats that received microbiota from the fasting SHRSP rats had significantly lower the blood pressure than the rats that had received microbiota from SHRSP control rats,”

"These results demonstrated that the alterations to the microbiota induced by fasting were sufficient to mediate the blood pressure-lowering effect of intermitting fasting.”

"We applied whole genome shotgun sequence analysis of the microbiota as well as untargeted metabolomics analysis of plasma and gastrointestinal luminal content. Among the changes we observed, alterations in products of bile acid metabolism stood out as potential mediators of blood pressure regulation,"

"Supporting this finding, we found that supplementing animals with cholic acid, a primary bile acid, also significantly reduced blood pressure in the SHRSP model of hypertension," 

"This study is important to understand that fasting can have its effects on the host through microbiota manipulation," 

"This is an attractive idea because it can potentially have clinical applications. Many of the bacteria in the gut microbiota are involved in the production of compounds that have been shown to have beneficial effects as they make it into the circulation and contribute to the regulation of the host's physiology. Fasting schedules could one day help regulate the activity of gut microbial populations to naturally provide health benefits."

Activity and Blood Pressure

A study in March 2020, part of the Framingham Heart Study, said,

• “Measuring habitual physical activity in community-based settings in this way distinguishes our study from prior studies that have looked at either self-reported physical activity or used accelerometers to measure daily activity for only a short amount of time, usually about a week,"

• "This study [result: more daily steps daily, tracked by a watch, lowers blood pressure] solidifies our understanding of the relationship between physical activity and blood pressure and raises the possibility that obesity or body mass index accounts for a lot of that relationship.”

• “Going forward, it would be useful to look at how smart devices might be leveraged to promote physical activity, reduce the burden of obesity and potentially reduce blood pressure."

Activity, Diabetes, and Blood Pressure

A March 2020 study by the University of Massachusetts said,

• "Walking is a widely accessible form of physical activity, and steps-per-day is an easy measurement and motivator that most people understand and can easily measure given the booming industry of wearable technologies or smartphones."

• "The results of our study add to the growing evidence about the importance of regular physical activity for improving heart health, and that preventive efforts can be effective, even as middle-aged adults move into older adulthood."

The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical School said,

• "Diabetes and high blood pressure are not inevitable. Healthy lifestyle changes, such as attaining and maintaining a healthy body weight, improving diet and increasing physical activity can help reduce diabetes risk. This study shows that walking is an effective therapy to decrease risk,"

• "For people who find the idea of a daily, extended exercise period and physical activity regimen daunting, shifting the focus to accumulating steps throughout the day may help them become more active … The more steps, the better."

Visceral Fat, Obesity, Heart Disease and Diabetes

A January 2019 study by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute looked at visceral adipose tissue – visceral fat – (VAT).  

One theory, the "VAT prioritization hypothesis", suggests that a fetus that is undernourished makes the decision to store fat (energy) in visceral fat instead of in fat under the skin – subcutaneous fat.  Visceral fat (VAT) is designed to protect from infection. This prioritizing has a major impact on later life obesity, diabetes, blood pressure. VAT is, in part, stored in the omentum (we wrote about that recently).

An increase in visceral fat causes inflammation. This can lead to insulin resistance. A feed-back loop starts: even more visceral fat is stored.

The researchers said,

• “Trying to understand diseases related to obesity without understanding the abdominal structures [the omentum] that become obese is like trying to understand circulatory diseases without knowing the functions of the heart,"

• "The fact that visceral fat tissue evolved to fight visceral infections provides a causal hypothesis for how high fructose sweeteners and saturated fats contribute to chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes,"

• "They influence which bacteria grow inside the intestines [called the microbiome], making the intestinal walls more permeable and releasing more toxins into the bloodstream, stimulating the visceral immune system and potentially leading to chronic inflammatory disease."

• "I think the combination of malnutrition early in life coupled with modern diets of saturated and trans-fats and high-fructose foods available on a global scale is leading to a situation that is toxic for individuals in many different cultures."

• "People's body shape--apple versus pear--is based on the way their bodies allocate fat. Even in ancient societies, poor nutrition leading to investment in VAT contributed to apple-shaped bodies, versus more 'beautiful,' voluptuous, pear-shaped bodies associated with SAT fat storage by better-nourished babies. Social upheaval (war, conquest and disease) would have favored flexibility in fat allocation because social rank and food availability would occasionally have changed."

Coffee and Metabolic Syndrome

The medical term “metabolic syndrome” describes the combination of

• Diabetes,

• High Blood Pressure, and

• Obesity.

 Obesity is defined as having a BMI in the range 30-39.9.

Assistant Professor Giuseppe Grosso of the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC) in a November 2019 study and Associate Professor Estefania Toledo reviewing the evidence in the SUN (Seguimiento University of Navarra) cohort study (n=22,000), found, “moderate coffee consumption [defined as drinking one to four cups daily] was associated with reduced risk of [metabolic syndrome] whilst higher intakes were not. This was reported for both regular and decaffeinated coffee.”