HHS HealthBeat (March 08, 2006)

Brains and blood pressure

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Getting stressed can raise blood pressure. But how does stress, which is a mental state, get turned onto the physical state of blood pressure going up? A researcher at the University of Pittsburgh links the transformation to something that happens in the brain.

Peter Gianaros had volunteers do a computer task that created stress so he could examine what happened in a part of the brain that responds to stress and can exert control over blood pressure.

Gianaros' study in the journal Psychophysiology was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

"Activity in a specific brain region, the cingulate cortex, is associated with a rise in blood pressure during stress." (eight seconds)

But he says you don't need brain science to know how to deal with stress – healthy outlets include deep slow breathing.

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: August, 15 2006