High Blood Pressure Only During Doctor’s Visits Could Be a Sign of Trouble
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iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Do you suffer from white-coat hypertension?
It’s a condition whereby a person’s blood pressure actually spikes during a doctor’s visit but usually during no other times.
However, whatever white-coat hypertension is attributed to, such as anxiety, for instance, it may also be sign of serious health problems that are normally associated with actual hypertension.
That’s the finding of Italian researchers who did a meta-analysis of 10 studies involving thousands of adult patients from three different continents including the U.S.
What they learned was that people who experienced white-coat hypertension had significantly thicker carotid neck arteries than people with normal blood pressure.
Thicker carotid neck arteries is a sign of hardening of the arteries, a leading cause of heart attack and stroke.
While hypertension is associated with carotid artery thickening, even surges of blood pressure, such as in the doctor’s office, can also result in arterial damage.
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