Heart Health
In Brief
Hypertension on the rise. One-quarter to one-third of U.S. adults — between 60 million and 70 million Americans — have high blood pressure (also known as hypertension). Less than half of them manage to keep their blood pressure under control with diet, exercise, medication, stress reduction, and other strategies (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the federal Medical Expenditure Panel Survey).
Exercise and HDL. Physical activity boosts protective HDL more in some people than others. Why? Research suggests that exercise affects the function of several genes that influence HDL (Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics, February 2011). Variants of these genes from person to person could explain why some people have larger increases in HDL in response to exercise than others.
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