So many times we hear about the dangers of one disease causing another (or more).
For example, if you’re diabetic, it’ almost a guarantee that you’ll have high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
And so it is with the body’s many systems…they don’t operate as silos. They each affect one another- sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly.
The cardiovascular and reproductive systems are a good example, as identified in a new study out of Europe linking prostate problems and high blood pressure.
Disturbingly, this research is now showing that high blood pressure is responsible for enlarged prostate and even prostatitis.
In an effort to find risk factors for prostate cancer, researchers in Umea University Hospital in Sweden looked for contributors that weren’t known culprits, such as age and family history are. Until now, other risk factors have been fairly elusive.
Two certain factors became clear, though, in the study involving almost 290,000 men from all over the world.
The highest risk factors once age and family history were factored out were high blood pressure and a high body Mass Index, or BMI.
A correlation was observed among men who suffer from a high blood pressure; as systolic pressure grows, equally so does the risk of dying from prostate cancer.
A similar trajectory was seen in men’s BMI, with those having the unhealthiest BMI also having the highest risk of dying from prostate cancer.
It was not clear if the high blood pressure or high BMI were direct causes of prostate cancer in the first place, as more research needs to be done, but the study did narrow down potential areas of more research, namely looking at what kind of changes the BP and BMI cause to the vessels and nerve function in the prostate that encourage cancerous cell growth.
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