High blood pressure — which affects almost half of the U.S. adult population — is sometimes called the “silent killer” because it often has no symptoms and can lead to heart attacks and stroke.
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For the study, researchers followed 32,925 women from the Nurses’ Health Study; 53,852 women from the Nurses’ Health Study II, and 17,104 men from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. None had high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer at the start.
Over the next 12 to 16 years, 37,123 of the participants developed high blood pressure.
Among those who reported eating at least two servings of red meat, chicken or fish a week, the risk of developing high blood pressure was 17 percent higher in people who grilled, broiled, or roasted the meat more than 15 times per month compared to people who used those high-temp cooking techniques less than four times a month.
The risk of developing high blood pressure was also 15 percent higher in people who preferred their food well done, compared to those who preferred rarer meats.
It’s not clear why that’s happening, but some studies suggest cooking meat at high-temperatures could lead certain chemicals to form, inducing oxidative stress, inflammation and insulin resistance in animals, and possibly leading to an elevated risk of developing high blood pressure, Liu said.
It also not clear whether this the same mechanism involved in the link between grilled meats and cancer, he added. There’s no conclusive evidence that grilled meats can cause cancer in humans. But processed meat, such as bacon or hot dogs, does cause cancer, and red meat probably does, too, a World Health Organization group announced in 2015.