“Study Shows Workplace Discrimination Linked to High Blood Pressure Risk”

A new study published in the journal American Heart Association It indicates that employees who are more likely to be discriminated against in the work environment are at risk of developing high blood pressure.

The study stated that chronic exposure to discrimination at work can lead to impairment within the cardiovascular system due to persistent stress feedback and higher blood pressure in general.

Researchers define discrimination as “unfair conditions or unfavorable treatment at work because of personal characteristics, particularly race, gender, or age.”

Researchers analyzed data on 1,246 people in the United States from 2004 to 2006 in the study, which was published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The researchers followed the sample until 2013 and 2014, that is, for a period of 8 years.

Each participant said they did not have high blood pressure at the start of the research, as most of them did not smoke and drank little or no alcohol.

High blood pressure damages arteries and makes them less flexible, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

High blood pressure can also lead to heart disease, which means a higher risk of problems such as heart attacks and strokes.

More than 93 percent of the participants were white and about 52 percent were women. A third of them were younger than 45 years old, another third between 46 and 55 years old, and a third over 56 years old.

To assess levels of discrimination, study participants filled out surveys about whether they were treated unfairly at work, whether they felt watched more closely than others at work, if they felt ignored and if promotions were offered fairly.

The survey also asked how often ethnic, racial or sexual slurs or jokes were said in the work environment. According to the analysis, 319 of the participants reported having high blood pressure by the end of the eight years.

People who experienced moderate levels of workplace discrimination at the start of the study were 22 percent more likely than those who reported low levels of workplace discrimination to report high blood pressure eight years later.