A small study at Michigan State University found that 45% of male participants with bipolar disorder had hypertension – high blood pressure – compared with 30.5% of the general population. A high percentage of these men were smokers, and more than a third were obese.
The study didn’t factor in the medications the men had taken in the past or were currently taken, and the authors acknowledged that there were a lot of things that could be contributing to a higher rate of hypertension. Many psychiatric medications cause weight gain, which very often leads to high blood pressure.
Smoking has also been connected to high blood pressure, and it’s not surprising that so many of the men in the study were smokers. Last year I reported on a study that found people with bipolar disorder were more than 7 times as likely to be current daily smokers than the general population. Results of the admittedly unscientific poll attached to that blog seem to confirm this, too: 51% of those responding were current smokers and only 13% said they had never smoked.
I never had hypertension, even though it is common in my family history, until I began gaining weight from psychiatric medications. As my weight rose, so did my blood pressure, until finally I was put on medication to control it.
How about you?
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By Marcia Purse, About.com Guide to Bipolar Disorder