Lower Blood Pressure

Custom Search

We’ve all heard of the expression ‘he/she died of a broken heart’. But this old saying may be closer to the truth than you think. ‘Broken heart’ is a colloquial expression that can mask many reasons for severe unhappiness, including those that result from relationship breakdown, loneliness and depression.

These two interrelated conditions often go hand in hand, and if you are unfortunate to suffer from depression, you have more than double the average risk of suffering a fatal heart attack. When we are isolated from familiar contacts such as family members, friends and acquaintances from work, then we inevitably suffer from elevated blood pressure and our bodies become more prone to all types of infection and illness, including heart disease.

Modern society has more loneliness and depression

Our modern society has more loneliness and depression than any previous generation due to the relentless increase in divorce, family breakdown, and growth of single person households, plus an aging population. This leads to increased blood pressure readings – up to thirty points higher, compared to similar people who are in stable personal and family relationships and who have active social lives.

The problem is linked to raised levels of the hormone cortisol, that has a direct relationship to higher blood pressure. Raising blood pressure by this amount can move the sufferer from normal blood pressure to pre-hypertension or full hypertension. This in turn leads to a trebling of the risk of developing heart disease and stroke, and more than double the mortality rate from suffering from the conditions.

The problem is even greater in those who are more the most reclusive in their social behaviour, and in this group of people who have significantly less contact with other human beings, the effects on their health is comparable to the risk of developing heart illness from known poor lifestyle factors such as smoking and unhealthy diet.

Women may be particularly at risk from heart disease due to depression

Depression in women leads to an even greater risk of dying from heart-related complaints such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart arrhythmia and diabetes, and it appears that the risk is proprtional to the severity of the depression. Unfortunately, taking anti-depressant medication does not seem to improve the situation for most women suffering from depression. There are worrying concerns among the medical profession that there could be a relationship between the anti-depressants and the increased incidence heart problems in women taking the medicine, including twice the risk of suffering from sudden cardiac death.

What can be done to reduce loneliness and depression?

Professor John Cacioppo from the University of Chicago has studied the phenomena and has recommended that a few strong relationships are of greater value than many acquaintances of lesser value. This underpins the value of personal and family relationships, above contemporary alternative forms of social contact such as those developed by casual contact or contacts developed from the Internet that may not produce physical meeting, or contact between the participants in the relationship