{"id":181629,"date":"2010-01-14T20:03:54","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T01:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\/?p=139072"},"modified":"2010-01-14T20:03:54","modified_gmt":"2010-01-15T01:03:54","slug":"moms-may-have-lower-blood-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/181629","title":{"rendered":"Moms May Have Lower Blood Pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, you read the headline correctly. New research has shown that parents, particularly mothers, have lower blood pressure than people who aren&#8217;t parents. Plus, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\/articles\/red-alert-for-women%E2%80%99s-hearts\/\">blood pressure<\/a> wasn&#8217;t affected by the number of kids or the ages of kids. So, two-year-old or 16-year-old, it&#8217;s all the same when it comes to blood pressure.<\/p>\n<p>Are you surprised? Me too, a bit.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, this is one of those &#8220;how interesting&#8221; studies. No doctor is going to tell you to have a kid to lower your blood pressure! You can do that with exercise and a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\/articles\/reduce-your-stroke-risk-with-less-salt\/\">diet low in sodium<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-139082\" src=\"http:\/\/images3.blisstree.com\/files\/2010\/01\/mother-bp.jpg\" alt=\"mother-bp\" width=\"500\" height=\"332\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis doesn\u2019t mean the more kids you have, the better your blood pressure,\u201d said Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a Brigham Young University psychologist who studies relationships and health. She said that the findings are linked with parenthood only, not the number of children or employment status.<\/p>\n<p>According to Holt-Lunstad, even though caring for children can be stressful, deriving a <strong>sense of meaning and purpose<\/strong> from that stress is associated with better health. However, it&#8217;s difficult to pinpoint exactly why parents were found to have lower blood pressure. It could be a biological or social response.<\/p>\n<p>The study involved 198 adults who wore portable blood pressure monitors for 24 hours. The age range of participants was 20 to 68 years, and 70% had children.<\/p>\n<p>Through statistical analysis, researchers were able to account for other factors known to influence blood pressure: age, body mass, gender, exercise, employment and smoking. They zeroed in on the relationship between parenthood and blood pressure, and found it to be positive.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, the 24-hour <strong>blood pressure readings for parents<\/strong> averaged 116 \/ 71. That&#8217;s 4.5  points lower than non-parents for systolic blood pressure (the first number). And it&#8217;s 3 points lower than non-parents in diastolic blood pressure. The difference is statistically significant. The findings were reported in journal <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.springer.com\/medicine\/journal\/12160\">Annals of Behavioral Medicine<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Why do you think parents in this study were found to have lower blood pressure than non-parents?<\/p>\n<p>(Image via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sxc.hu\/photo\/1081262\">stock.xchng<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>Post from: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\">Blisstree<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\/articles\/moms-may-have-lower-blood-pressure\/\">Moms May Have Lower Blood Pressure<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, you read the headline correctly. New research has shown that parents, particularly mothers, have lower blood pressure than people who aren&#8217;t parents. Plus, blood pressure wasn&#8217;t affected by the number of kids or the ages of kids. So, two-year-old or 16-year-old, it&#8217;s all the same when it comes to blood pressure. Are you surprised? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2832,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2832"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}