A study has cited physical inactivity as a cause for one in five university students having high blood pressure.
The blood pressure was found to be higher than normal for the students’ age and the research was carried out on people with an average age of 20.
Dr Kalyana Bairapareddy, an assistant professor in the College of Health Science at the University of Sharjah, who authored the study said that physical activity was less among students.
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He said that in the school there were physical education classes, but there was no such thing in the University.
The research spanned on 176 male and 178 female students at the University of Sharjah. Each student was asked to fill in a questionnaire that covered, among other things, the kind of exercise students performed.
The weight and height of students coming from a variety of Arab countries was measured along with blood pressure which was recorded three times before the average was calculated.
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The blood pressure readings were used to work out mean arterial pressure which is the average pressure in a person’s arteries in one cardiac cycle.
The study found that among the students, 63 (17.8 per cent) had “early hypertension” which was indicated by a mean arterial pressure above 100 indicating that they could go on to develop hypertension.
For male students, 22.7 per cent had early hypertension compared to 12.9 percent of female students. (AW)
