Stress and high blood pressure

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Stress and high blood pressure

Your blood pressure increases when you are under physical or emotional stress. If you constantly feel "stressed out," your body may maintain an abnormally high level of responsiveness, creating an artificially induced state of high blood pressure.

Unlike exercise, which provides your body with well-controlled physical stress for a limited amount of time, chronic stress does not benefit your circulatory system. Rather, it increases your risk of illness. However, stress is very much a part of modern life, and it can be hard to control the amount of stress in your life without changing your daily habits significantly.

Many of the ways people commonly "control" their stress or mask it—eating, drinking alcohol, and smoking—contribute to the development of high blood pressure. You may wish to use exercise to manage your stress. Failing that, you may need to seek counseling to help you change how you think about certain things that cause you to be stressed, or to learn relaxation techniques. Relaxation techniques, including progressive muscle relaxation and transcendental meditation (TM), may help reduce mild high blood pressure.

For more information, see the topic Stress Management.

Credits

Last updated:	April 24, 2007
Author:	Robin Parks, MS
Reviewed By:	Caroline S. Rhoads, MD - Internal Medicine, Ruth Schneider, MPH, RD - Diet and Nutrition
Editors:	Kathleen M. Ariss, MS, Pat Truman