A recent study of remote tribal communities revealed that the reason blood pressure tends to rise with growing age is perhaps because of a Western diet and the lifestyle that came along with it. Published in the JAMA Cardiology journal, the study was helmed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, US.
The study found that the Yanomami people among the Amazonian tribe that lives in near-isolation with no interference from Western dietary influences showed no increase in average blood pressure from age one to age 60. They compared the results to another tribe, the Yekwanas, a nearby tribe that did include some amount of processed food and salt, to conclude the study findings. The researchers found that the Yekwanas showed higher-blood pressure in late middle age, perhaps because of their acceptance of processed foods.
Living as hunter-gatherers and gardeners in the rainforests of northern Brazil and Venezuela in South America, the Yanomamis typically have a diet that is low in fat and salt and high in fruits and fibre. An average Yanomami adult virtually didn’t show any signs of atherosclerosis and obesity. Their blood pressure waslower than the average and didn’t show any significant increase with age.
For their study, the study took blood pressure measurements from Yanomami children as well. Their data suggested that the blood pressure remained close to the same low level from age one through age 60, with no trend towards an increase or decrease.
“That rising blood pressure is a result of ageing is a widely held belief in cardiology, but our findings add to evidence that rising blood pressure may be an avoidable consequence of a Western diet and lifestyle rather than ageing itself,” says Noel Mueller, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Bloomberg School and member of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research.
Thus, we can safely conclude – the Yanomami way of living that’s devoid of processed food and lifestyle is the key to avoid hypertension and other lifestyle disorders.
