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TUESDAY, March 28 (HealthDay News) -- Loneliness has now joined obesity and lack of exercise as a potential risk factor for hypertension.
New research shows that loneliness can add 30 points to a blood pressure reading for adults over the age of 50.
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The study's results have surprised everyone involved.
"The take-home message is that feelings of loneliness are a health risk, in that the lonelier you are, the higher your blood pressure. And we know that high blood pressure has all kinds of negative consequences," said lead researcher Louise Hawkley, a research scientist at the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago.
Her team published its findings in the April issue of Psychology and Aging.
Hawkley said this study was inspired by previous work, published in 2002, that discovered profound and lingering effects of loneliness on the blood pressure of undergraduate college students.
"We thought that if this was maintained over time, it's setting up their systems to develop vascular issues that could lead to hypertension," she said.
So, in this latest study, Hawkley's group interviewed 229 people aged 50 to 68 years of age. They used standard questionnaires to determine each participant's perceived level of loneliness, as well as other psychosocial and cardiovascular risk factors.
The researchers found that lonely older people had blood pressure readings that were as much as 30 points higher than others -- even after other negative emotive states, like sadness, stress or hostility, were taken into account.
A 30-point spread in blood pressure is equal to the difference between a normal diastolic pressure of 120 mm/Hg and stage 1 hypertension, measured at 150 mm/Hg, the researchers pointed out.
What's more, the effect of loneliness in increasing hypertension appeared to get stronger with age, the Chicago team found.
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