Relationship between Adults’ Blood Pressure, Occupation and Physical Activity: A cross-sectional study among 20 to 65 years adults in Sabzevar, Iran

Abstract

Due to its high prevalence and association with cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure is a health problem in industrialized and developing countries. In industrialized countries, 25% of adults and 60% of people over 60 have high blood pressure. Researches indicated that most risk factors for high blood pressure were related to individuals’ behavior and awareness, and educational programs, as one of the essential tools for changing lifestyle of the patients, have a significant impact on reducing risk-related behaviors and increasing healthy behaviors. Job stress is an important factor in occurrence of hypertension and heart disease. This study is an analytical research conducted in Sabzevar, Khorasan Razavi, in 2015-2016. Sabzevar has a population of 320,000 people. The target group of this study includes all the people in Sabzevar who aged between 20-65 (54%). For systolic blood pressure, difference between the number of classes of the two gender was significant (P = 0.006) with men's blood pressure was higher than that of women. In this study, subjects with systolic blood pressure of less than 13.99 were more likely to have normal body mass index. This finding is in line with the results of the research carried out by Winkelmayer. In their study. It was also reported that more than 75% of patients with high blood pressure had BMI> 25%.