WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- According to a new study, researchers have found that controlling blood pressure plays a key role in long-term brain health.
Scientists at University of Michigan have discovered that that high blood pressure causes faster cognitive decline, and that taking hypertension medication slows the pace of that decline.
They looked at changes in the thinking and memory abilities of adults over 18 who took part in six long-term studies conducted over the past five decades. These researchers had access to nearly eight years of data from each person, including systolic blood pressure, which is the top number in any blood pressure reading.
The data come from 22,095 non-Hispanic white adults and 2,475 Hispanic adults, none of whom had a history of stroke or dementia when they enrolled. At enrollment, the average systolic blood pressure was lower in Hispanic adults than non-Hispanic white adults (132.5 mmHg compared with 134 mmHg), despite Hispanic adults having older age than non-Hispanic adults (62 versus 54) and blood pressure tending to increase with age.
All in all , the downward trend in thinking and memory due to high blood pressure happened at the same pace in both groups.
The researchers saw a faster decline in overall cognitive performance in the Hispanic group compared with the non-Hispanic white group. However, differences in blood pressure between the groups did not explain the differences in cognitive decline -- perhaps because Hispanic people had lower blood pressure than the non-Hispanic white people in these studies.