Long hours at the desk and you risk high blood pressure

Long hours at the desk and you risk high blood pressure

Work long hours at the desk and you risk development of high blood pressure, so says a study published in the journal Hypertension from the American Heart Association. They came to this conclusion after analysing data from over 3500 white collar workers over 5 years.

They measured both workplace blood pressure after a period of rest and ambulatory blood pressure recorded automatically every 15 minutes during working hours. When sustained elevation of blood pressure is noted on the recordings, it was called sustained hypertensionThose who were on treatment for high blood pressure also came into this category. When regular recording were normal but ambulatory recordings were high, it was called masked hypertension.

They also checked whether confounding factors like lifestyle related risk factors, high blood sugar, family history of heart disease, job strain or sociodemographic factors could account for this finding. Even after adjusting for these factors, still long work hours was associated with both sustained hypertension and masked hypertension.