Hypertension and skin color - Blacks prone to high blood pressure

Nutrition Health Review, Fall, 1990

Hypertension and Skin Color

It seems that whenever a group of researchers needs funds or a pharmaceutical company decides to promote some free publicity for a drug to alleviate hypertension (high blood pressure), there is at least one sure-fire ploy that is certain to alert the Afro American market.

"Blacks are naturally prone to high blood pressure" is the usual headline in one form or another. Sometimes the rationale points to low economic status. The poor blacks have the problem because of poverty conditions. How do you deal with hypertension among the upscale blacks when low economic status is not the case? "The upscale blacks are caught in a knot of frustration (they cannot enjoy the fruits of their success because of social rejection!)."

These are serious professionals who ply these theories. Somehow they have missed the hereditary factor - but that can be treated with diet, which doesn't entail a lifetime of drugs.

All blacks can trace their roots to the equatorial, high heat and humid conditions of Africa. Nature in its infinite wisdom may have endowed them with sodium-retaining functions to prevent depletion from perspiration.

If this assumption has some truth, then heredity plays a tremendous part in sodium retention among Afro-Americans. It was natural and healthful in Africa. Exposed to the typical Western diet, the additional influx of salt adds burdens that can only lead to hypertension.

Studies reported in Medical Tribune (5/17/90) showed that hypertension is highest among the darker-skinned individuals and lower among lighter-skin blacks of mixed origin.