Do Cardiovascular Responses to Active and Passive Coping Tasks predict Future Blood Pressure over a 10-Month Later?

Religiosity, Education, John Henryism Active Coping, and Cardiovascular Responses to Anger Recall for African American Men

The present study examined if high levels of religious attendance (ORG), private religious activity (NOR), or intrinsic religiosity (SUB) buffer cardiovascular responses to active speech and anger recall lab stressors alone and by John Henryism Active Coping (JHAC) and educational attainment. A sample of 74 healthy African American males, aged 23 to 47 years, completed psychosocial surveys and a lab reactivity protocol involving active speech and anger recall with a 5-minute baseline and ensuing recovery periods. Measures of religiosity, JHAC, and education were related to continuous measures of systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP), for each task and rest period with repeated measures ANOVA tests. The period by education by JHAC interaction effect was significant for diastolic BP responses at low but not higher NOR. At low education and low NOR, diastolic BP levels increased significantly during anger recall and ensuing recovery for high but not low JHAC persons. Thus, being deprived of education and private religious activity may put these African American men in a vulnerable situation where higher effort coping may exacerbate their cardiovascular reactivity and recovery to anger induction.

Cardiovascular Response to Mental Stress Tests and the Prediction of Blood Pressure

BACKGROUND

It has been proposed that increased physiological responses (i.e., cardiovascular reactivity) to a stressor or stressors may increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) including increased blood pressure (BP) or hypertension. However, many prospective studies have examined the hemodynamic reactions to laboratory stress tests and CVD in Western countries and only a few studies have examined with varying durations of follow-up in the same sample studies. In addition, still relatively little is known about cardiovascular reactivity in Asian populations. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine whether cardiovascular responses to psychological stressors remained a significant predictor of 40-month follow-up among initially normotensive participants in Thailand, Asia.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Hemodynamic parameter was measured at rest, during, and after mental arithmetic, a speech task, and a cold pressor task. Ninety-five healthy normotensive male and female participants were reevaluated BP at 40 months later.

RESULTS

Regression analyses indicated that after adjustment for baseline BP, initial age, sex, body mass index, and family history of CVD, heightened systolic BP (SBP) responses to mental arithmetic was associated with increased future SBP (ΔR² = 0.04, P = 0.023).

CONCLUSIONS

Therefore, these findings suggest that cardiovascular reactivity remains a prediction of future BP and may play a role in the development of hypertension and CVD.