How to raise a boy's blood pressure
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
Kids shouldn't smoke, and smokers shouldn't smoke around them. Even if a person does not smoke, breathing the fumes that a smoker produces - what's called secondhand smoking -- can be bad for health. And a study of children underlines this.
At the University of Minnesota, Jill Baumgartner looked at data on more than 6,400 children ages 8 to 17. She found boys who had been exposed to secondhand smoke had slightly higher blood pressure:
``Higher blood pressure in childhood is associated with adult hypertension, which is strongly correlated with things like stroke, heart attack, heart disease.'' (10 seconds)
Baumgartner presented her study at a meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies. The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.