tim_ume asked:
Is it somehow related to the presence of melanin?
Is it somehow related to the presence of melanin?
As stated below:
Risk factors for hypertension include:
* age over 60
* male sex
* race (The African-American community has a higher incidence of hypertension.)
* heredity
* salt sensitivity
* obesity
* inactive lifestyle
* heavy alcohol consumption
* use of oral contraceptives
from: http://www.answers.com/hypertension?cat=health
Please reply if you know the answer, thank you! I am interested to find out.
lower income people eat more fast food crap which is full of salt and causes hypertension. Men eat more than women, blacks are typically poorer.
ok, this is my best educated guess…
Over 60 because you have treated your heart badly all your life by eating foods leading to high colesterol, have probably had small heart attacks that were not really noticed.
Males tend to be in high stress jobs.
Race–genetically passed down through a race due to the fact that race bred mostly with its own kind, so more and more carry the gene for it…and that kind of explains heredity as well.
Salt sensitivity–can cause retention of water in the body thus causing the heart to have to pump harder to get fluid moved out of body.
If you are overweight, your heart has to work harder to pump the blood through your body. If you have this type, you can usually diet and get your pressure down.
Inactive lifestyle–your heart never gets a work out and becomes weak, just like if you never lifted any weight your arms would become weak.
I am not sure about alcohol, but I believe red wine is actually good for your heart, one glass a day.
Oral contraceptives, and other medication puts unnatural things into your bloodstream and causes hormones in your brain to work differently.
Hope that helps.
There may be a melanin connection with Vitamin D production. Vitamin D deficiency is at epidemic levels, is more common in darker-skinned people, and is associated with hypertension.
Dark skin (higher levels of melanin) impair Vitamin D production from sunlight exposure. In northern latitudes, darker skinned people tend to have very low Vitamin D levels. These low levels may contribute to the higher prevalence of hypertension in this group of the population.
There is a lot of research being published on this topic. Go to Pubmed and enter “vitamin D, hypertension”. I found 494 research papers using these search terms.
Here are a couple of good references you can find on Pubmed:
1) Am J Clin Nutr. 2008 Apr;87(4):1080S-6S. “Vitamin D deficiency: a worldwide problem with health consequences.”
2) Nutr Rev. 2008 May;66(5):291-7. “Vitamin D and blood pressure connection: update on epidemiologic, clinical, and mechanistic evidence.”