Just after the Spring Festival in 2022, the topic of sudden death of young white-collar workers has been on the hot search one after another:

  • On February 7, some netizens claimed that there was an employee who worked for Bilibili website died suddenly after working overtime during the Chinese new year
  • On February 23, a 28-year-old employee of ByteDance is confirmed to have passed away.

Though it’s still controversial whether their sudden death is related to working overtime, it is an indisputable fact that young people are under high work pressure and some of their bad life habits such as staying up late are going to kill them. These phenomena tend to become social problems.

Young people who work long hours in the office are more likely to have high blood pressure

A study published in the journal of 《Hypertension》concluded that white-collar workers who work long hours are more likely to have high blood pressure. The study recruited 3,547 white-collar workers from three public institutions in Quebec. The research date was collected at 3-time points over 5 years from these white-collar workers who participated in the study. The participated employees were divided into four categories according to their weekly work hours: less than 35 hours, 35-40 hours, 41-48 hours and more than 48 hours. Wearing ambulatory blood pressure monitoring devices on their arms, the white-collar workers who took part in the test measured their blood pressure three times in the morning through the device's office check mode, and then checked again every 15 minutes for the rest of the workday.

 

The study results turned out that as the number of hours worked per week increased, the prevalence of masked and persistent hypertension among white-collar workers increased:

  • Working 49 or more hours each week was associated with a 70% greater likelihood of having masked hypertension and 66% greater likelihood of having sustained hypertension-elevated blood pressure readings in and out of a clinical setting.
  • Working between 41 and 48 hours per week was linked to a 54% greater likelihood of having masked hypertension and 42% greater likelihood of having sustained hypertension.
  • The findings took into account variables such as job strain, age, gender, education level, occupation, smoking status, body mass index and other health factors.

“The link between long working hours and high blood pressure in the study was about the same for men as for women.” as Dr. Xavier Trudel, who’s from the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Laval University, Quebec, Canada also noted.

Young adults with raised blood pressure may have increased risk of cardiovascular events in later life

It is estimated that more than 18 million people die of cardiovascular disease each year, accounting for one third of the global deaths. Cardiovascular disease is one of the major causes of sudden death while hypertension is closely related to cardiovascular disease. Although hypertension is more prevalent in middle-aged and older adults, the incidence of hypertension in young adults has been increasing in recent years.
In order to evaluate and quantify the future risk of cardiovascular events in young adults with high blood pressure, a research team from Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital attempted to uncover the association between hypertension and long-term cardiovascular events in young adults through a systematic literature review and meta-analysis. The researchers searched Medline, Embase, and Web of Science for articles from inception to 6 March 2020. They also manually searched from the Google Scholar, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, or Wanfang datasets for additional grey literature, including government reports, insurance reports, conference proceedings and digital dissertations. Additionally, they looked through ClincalTrials.gov and the World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Platfrom for ongoing or unpublished eligible studies to select and find researches related to hypertension and cardiovascular in youth.
Through a series of screening, 17 studies were finally included in the analysis. The studies included a sample of more than 4.5 million young adults with average follow-up of 14.7 years. The results of the analysis indicated an association between hypertension and the the risk of clinically manifest cardiovascular events in young adults. There was a graded progressive relationship between blood pressure class and increased risk of cardiovascular events, with relative risks of 1.35 for normal hypertension, 1.92 for grade 1 hypertension, and 3.15 for grade 2 hypertension.
Souce:《Association between high blood pressure and long term cardiovascular events in young adults: systematic review and meta-analysis》

Monitoring your blood pressure when you’re young

Young people with elevated blood pressure have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease later in life. However, people often have the misunderstanding that high blood pressure is the "patent" of middle-aged and even elderly people. In fact,the effects of blood pressure on health come earlier than we thought, even quietly starting before middle age. From elevated blood pressure to a series of complications, the process is likely to take a decade.

Cardiologist and professor Walter Abhayaratna said: “It’s important we introduce lifestyle and diet changes early on in life to prevent our blood pressure from rising too much, rather than waiting for it to become a problem.” With busy work, young people still need to balance work and life as much as possible, especially avoiding long hours of work.

In addition, blood pressure monitoring is a good start to pay attention to blood pressure health. The International Society of Hypertension recommends the use of an upper arm electronic monitor as a home blood pressure measurement device. It uses the oscillometric principle and has high measurement data accuracy, which is well recognized by families all over the world. In addition to the upper-arm electronic blood pressure monitor, for young people, if there is a fashionable, portable, and accurate device that can be easily carried around, it will become easier to measure and monitor blood pressure.

 

YHE BP Doctor Pro can perfectly satisfy this need. As a smart watch with blood pressure monitoring as its core function, it uses air cuff to measure blood pressure by oscillometric method (the same as the blood pressure detection principle of an upper arm electronic blood pressure monitor), and uses PPG technology to monitor heart rate and blood oxygen, helping users get a quick overview of their own health at anytime and anywhere. Compared with the traditional electronic blood pressure monitor, the accuracy and portability of blood pressure detection are well fulfilled by BP Doctor Pro. In addition, the cloud data storage function of the BP Doctor App will automatically monitor and display blood pressure fluctuations on a daily, weekly, monthly, or even annual basis, making it easier for users and doctors to review and monitor their blood pressure fluctuations.