A new study has found that more Americans, especially the senior citizens have become sensitive to health issues, and to begin with have managed to bring their blood pressure under control.

Study author, Bernard M.Y. Cheung, said,"It is hard to attribute the improvement to any particular factor. We have tried to see if the explanation lies in better awareness, detection or treatment. There is no statistically significant increase in these, so probably all of these contribute in a small way."

The study revealed that knowledge and awareness about blood pressure control increased from 70.6 percent to 81 percent, and treatment rates also rose from 63.8 percent to 73.4 percent. Visible improvement was observed among obese people, where control rates increased from 25.1 percent to 36.2 percent, and was superb for people with diabetes; improvement doubled from 15.7% to 33.2%.

But there was one factor that raised concern. To quote the words of the researcher, "We found that adults below the age of 40 often do not know they have hypertension, whereas awareness of hypertension is high among the elderly. This is unfortunate, because hypertension in the younger age group is relatively easy to control."

Researchers opined that it is imperative to get even the younger lot under the scanner, to enable timely blood pressure checks, to aid early treatment measures.

Source-Medindia
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