Blacks & Hypertension

Hypertension and coronary heart disease are two of the largest health issues that affect Americans today. Of the two million people who suffer from heart attacks and strokes each year, more than 750,000 of them are deadly (Harvey, 1995). Yet, what is even more alarming than these statistics is the degree to which African Americans suffer from hypertension. Recent studies suggest that as "many as 71 percent of all African American adults may have high blood pressure as compared with about 60 percent of the adult white population. In fact, blacks are more than twice as likely to develop high blood pressure as whites. In addition, hypertension in Black Americans tends to appear at an earlier age and it is often not treated as aggressively as cases of hypertension in whites," (Harvey, 1995: 1). There are different areas of research into the issue of why blacks suffer from hypertension more than Whites. There have been sociological studies that suggest that poverty and education disadvantages play a large role. Dieticians point to obesity and lifestyle habits such as smoking and lack of exercise. Geneticists suggest that it can be traced to a gene disadvantage and a higher incidence of diabetes which makes hypertension more difficult to treat. This analysis will discuss the various theories and research that attempt to explain the causes of the high degree of hypertension in the black population as opposed to the white population

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white doctors may be less inclined to recommend such advanced treatments to blacks based on a perception of their inability to pay for such treatments. Other studies that take more of a sociological point-of-view have expressed that one of the reasons why blacks may suffer from a higher rate of hypertension than whites is because of the fact that blacks undergo an inordinate amount of stress in their environment, a level that is considered to be much higher than that face by whites. Because of this evidence, researchers have concluded in some studies that the high level of chronic stress experienced by many blacks may be a major factor in the cause of higher hypertension levels among them, "Research has shown that chronic stress makes the nervous system release large amounts of norepinephrine, a hormone that causes the kidneys to slow down elimination of salt in the bloodstream and so reduce the risks of high blood pressure. We developed a theory which says the high rate of exposure to chronic stress among blacks, which is well documented, the high rate of poverty, the high rate of joblessness, living in more dangerous neighborhoods, and racial discrimination, could lead to the kidneys to hold salt longer," (Green, 1995: 1).

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