What is the relationship between diet, stress, and high blood pressure?

Diet and stress may interact to increase your blood pressure (BP). In a recent study, thirty healthy adults fasted the night before and then ate either a high-fat breakfast or a low-fat breakfast. Both meals contained about 800 calories, but the high-fat meal had 42 grams of fat and the low-fat meal only 1 gram of fat. A sodium supplement was added to the low-fat meal to even out the difference in sodium between the two meals.

Two hours later, the participants completed several stress-inducing tasks while researchers measured their cardiovascular response, including blood pressure, heart rate, and resistance within blood vessels. The tasks were designed to provoke mental and/or physical stress, such as completing a public speaking exercise about something emotionally provocative or holding a hand in ice water.

The results showed that regardless of the task, the blood pressure response was greater among those who ate the high-fat meal than among those who ate the low-fat one. Researchers say it’s unclear how a single high-fat meal can sensitize the body to stress, but the results suggest a new way in which high-fat diets may contribute to heart disease.

Some of the mechanisms explaining why changes in nutrition, exercise, and stress management lower blood pressure are becoming clearer. The Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1998 went to Dr. Louis J. Ignarro for discovering the important role of nitric oxide (not to be confused with nitrous oxide, which is laughing gas