Social support impacts blood pressure: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Older adults who lack support from family and friends may be at heightened risk of abnormal blood pressure regulation, new research suggests. In a study of 81 older African-American adults, researchers found that those who felt they lacked social support were less likely to show the normal blood-pressure decline that naturally comes with sleep. Other studies have linked this tendency -- dubbed "nondipping" blood pressure -- to a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. Similarly, research has suggested that people who lack a supportive circle of friends and relatives are at greater risk of cardiovascular disease. The new findings, reported in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, suggest a physiological reason for this connection. As a source of chronic stress, poor social support may affect nervous system activity in a way that hinders normal blood pressure regulation -- potentially contributing to heart disease and stroke. And if that is true, boosting older adults' social support might aid in lowering their cardiovascular risks, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Carlos J. Rodriguez of Columbia University Medical Center in New York. "If someone is found to have low social support there are different ways to intervene," Rodriguez told Reuters Health. One route would be educational sessions with spouses to increase their support of one another, he explained. Older adults could also be encouraged to join senior citizen centers or other community groups. Whether all of this can improve older adults' cardiovascular health, however, still needs to be studied further. For their study, Rodriguez and his colleagues gave participants a portable blood pressure monitor to chart the changes in their blood pressure over 24 hours. Of the 81 men and women, 68 had normal blood pressure, while the rest had high blood pressure that was not yet being treated. Study participants also completed a standard questionnaire on social support; the questions asked them, for example, how often they felt lonely, whether they wished they had more close friends and how often friends or family "let them down." In general, the researchers found, the third of participants with the lowest levels of social support had the highest prevalence of nondipping overnight blood pressure - 41 percent, versus 27 percent of those who reported the greatest social support. It's possible, according to Rodriguez and his colleagues, that people with greater social support are less likely to have unhealthy lifestyle habits. In this study, however, smoking, drinking and heavier body weight were not related to nondipping overnight blood pressure. Another possibility is that social support, or lack thereof, has physiologic effects. According to Rodriguez, low social support has been associated with dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system -- which controls involuntary activities like heart rate -- and heightened "cardiovascular reactivity" to stressors. "This," he noted, "would affect blood pressure regulation and lead to the phenomenon of 'nondipping.'"