Race may play role in obese teens' blood pressure

Doctors have known for years that obese kids are at increased risk of high blood pressure, Samuels noted. But the role of race and ethnicity has been unclear, he added.

So Samuels' team studied a diverse group of more than 21,000 Houston adolescents who had their blood pressure screened at school.

Overall, almost 3 percent were diagnosed with high blood pressure—after showing persistently high readings at three screenings.

Hispanic kids had the highest rate, at just over 3 percent. They also had the highest obesity rate, at 23 percent, the findings showed.

At the other end of the spectrum, Asians had the lowest rates of high blood pressure (1.7 percent) and obesity (10 percent).

In general, the study found, excess weight was linked to a raised risk of high blood pressure across all racial and ethnic groups.

But the impact of obesity was most clear among Hispanic and white kids: It raised their risk nearly sixfold and fourfold, respectively, compared to normal-weight students.

Weight-related differences were smaller among black and Asian students, the researchers said. Among black teens, 2 percent of those with a normal weight had high blood pressure, versus 4.5 percent of obese teens.
It's not clear why obesity affected kids differently, and the study only points to an association, not a direct cause-and-effect relationship.

Researchers do not fully understand the causes of high blood pressure in children, Mahgerefteh said.
He suspected, though, that some effects of obesity may have been "masked" in black kids.

Obesity was determined based on body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight in relation to height. It's an imperfect way to define obesity, Mahgerefteh pointed out, because it does not gauge body fat. A person who is larger-framed and muscular can fall into the "obese" category.

That's more likely to happen with blacks. So some black kids with a healthy body composition may have been deemed obese in this study, Mahgerefteh explained.

For parents, though, the bottom line is fairly straightforward, Samuels said. Be aware that kids can have high blood pressure, and that extra pounds are a risk factor.

The risk does not only rise once kids cross the obesity threshold, Mahgerefteh pointed out. Overweight kids in this study were more likely to have high blood pressure than their thinner peers, too.

"It's a continuum," Mahgerefteh said. "The more overweight you are, the higher the risk."

Once a child is diagnosed with high blood pressure, lifestyle measures—a healthy diet and regular exercise—are the go-to. "We have a higher threshold for using medication in kids," compared with adults, Mahgerefteh said.
If your teenager's blood pressure has not been checked in a while, it should be, Samuels said.

"Once kids move on to college, then young adulthood, they may stop going to the doctor," he noted. "Ideally, we want to catch high blood pressure when they're teenagers."

Samuels and his colleagues reported the findings online April 10 in Pediatrics.

>https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/?s=medicalxpress
>PRO-SCIENCE
>These sources consist of legitimate science or are evidence based through the use of credible scientific sourcing.
But this is all pseudoscience. Race doesn't exist.

People have known that different races and ethnicities are more likely to have certain health issues for a long time, this is hardly news. Based on historical diets, environments, and exposure over time, humans adapted and mutated to meet certain needs.

>>130743
lol no. The idea of using a single online source to validate the voracity of other online sources is amusing.

>>131308
>voracity
veracity

b-b-but I thought race was a social construct?

>>130766
>>130712
Just the trace of past european famines where starvation was more a danger than obesity. Likewise nordic people risked rachitism while african risked sunburns which gave different skin color. I wouldn't be surprised by blacks not resisting cold

>>131518
It is, but it's a category people are familiar with, so it's more practical to establish correlates with respect to a given phenotype to say "if you're African, you should be more careful about such and such disease".

It's usually not a perfect fit, but it's what most laypeople identify themselves by so it can be convenient when trying to educate people who is most likely to be at risk. Like, if you won a marathon, you've probably got African ancestry. Not because there's any causal relationship between being African and running faster, but because among the people who run the fastest for whatever reasons (environmental or genetic), most come from Kenya, which is in Africa.

>>133455
I would think Asians and Africans were at much higher risk of famine than Europeans, since European countries tend to benefit from a much higher concentration of arable land than virtually any part of Asia or Africa.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Arable_land_percent_world.png/400px-Arable_land_percent_world.png

>>130724
>Race doesn't exist.
Retarded media-fed Liberal detected.

If we didn't have different genetics, then the differences of melanin in the skin wouldn't be so obvious.

>>133457
>Facts
Congratulations anon. You're now racist.

>>133457
Is it possible so casually contradict oneself?
I suppose it is unless you're a troll on this slow board.

>phenotype
>but because among the people who run the fastest for whatever reasons (environmental or genetic)

Genes, just like you said. Genes are physical and there are physical differences between races. Therefore, race is not a social construct. Next you'll say that melanin is a social construct, blue eyes is a social construct, air is a social construct. Where does it end? In fact, where did it even begin?

I do think that people place far too much importance on race, but to deny that race doesn't exist is like denying that fat people aren't healthy, that someone who is healthy and 6 feet tall is not taller than someone who is healthy and 5 fee tall, and that spacetime doesn't curve around the sheer weight of your stupidity.

>>133478
>>133524
>>133532
There are no race, just really far more than five ethnicities

faggots are faggots.

>>130766
One of the first adaptations to result from a change in environment is gut flora and digestive system. Not at all suprising that different skin color also imples digestive system

>>133458
Agriculture allows humans to increase the total amount of food available, which is why agricultural people outcompeted hunter-gatherers, but agriculture is also far more susceptible to famine than hunter-gatherer lifestyle. One bad winter can kill lots of farmers but hunter-gatherers have many different food sources, and tend to migrate with the seasons, which gives them a lot of options when food is hard to come by. There were more farmers, but nomads were less succeptable to starvation