Women have become victims of sexual harassment and abuse. This is a sad truth that the world has faced. For those victims, it has been observed that high blood pressure was 12 percent more likely to happen to women who have experienced sexual harassment and 6 percent more common among those who have had sexual assault in their history.
While the signs don’t become visible immediately, it shows by the time they reach middle age. In fact, roughly one in four women have been sexually assaulted, and roughly one in eight of them have also experienced verbal or physical sexual harassment while they were holding down jobs. These were findings discovered in a new study. The findings also show that this history of sexual trauma puts these women at a higher risk of high blood pressure. Medical experts know that this is a risk factor for heart attacks and strokes.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The researchers followed 33,127 women for a total of seven years. These began when the women were 53 years old on average. It must be noted that no one involved had a history of high blood pressure or heart disease at the very start of study. When they did a follow-up, they found that a total of 7,096 women (21 percent) already suffered from hypertension.
Thus, it was discovered that high blood pressure was 12 percent more likely for the women who experienced sexual harassment and 6 percent more common for those who have had a history of sexual assault. As for those who experienced both types of traumatic experiences, they had a 17 percent higher chance of eventually suffering hypertension.
“We have long understood that stress is linked to high blood pressure,” says the senior study author, Rebecca Thurston, PhD. She is a professor of psychiatry and the director of the Women’s Biobehavioral Health Research Program at the University of Pittsburgh. “There has only recently been more attention to sexual harassment or assault — major stressors experienced by many women — and their implications for women’s heart health,” Dr. Thurston added.
Growing Number of Studies Focused on Sexual Violence and Heart Health
These latest findings on the research that focused on the connection between sexual harassment and assault to hypertension risk. These showed consistent results with an emerging body of research emphasizing how virulent these experiences of sexual violence can be, not just for their mental state, but for their cardiovascular health as well. Thurston noted this.
A study on this was published in Social Science and Medicine. This time, the researchers tried to establish the link between high blood pressure and a range of potential risk factors. Included here are sexual harassment, racial discrimination, workplace abuse, and occupational exposure to toxic pollutants. They found that it was only sexual harassment that was linked to elevated blood pressure.
Then there was another study that was published in JAMA Internal Medicine. This examined blood pressure levels among women who didn’t smoke and didn’t have a history of heart disease. Generally, 19 percent of them had a history of workplace sexual harassment and 22 percent of them had been victims of sexual assault. Women had gone through sexual harassment experiences were more than two times as likely to eventually suffer from hypertension.
Even with Some Limitations, Studies Stressed on the Consequences of Sexual Trauma
The new study, like many of the ones that preceded it, had its own set of limitation. One of which is that that researchers didn’t have enough data on the timing or gravity of any sexual trauma incidents. These may also have had an influence their health. Another setback they saw was that participants were all part of the Nurses Health Study II. This was a group of women who were predominantly white, well-educated, and well-paid. All of the findings might not be representative of the broader group of ladies.
Even then, the results had underscored the possible capability of a sexual trauma to have permanent implication for heart health. This was stated by the lead study author, Rebecca Lawn, PhD. She is an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
Dr. Lawn believes that there are several possible explanations for the link. A trauma have a direct impact on heart health and cause hypertension because it has the ability to send the body’s sympathetic nervous system into overdrive. When this happens, this tends to trigger a fight-or-flight response which, as time has shown, can lead to an elevated heart rate and higher blood pressure in the long run.
More than all the details mentioned above, traumatic experiences may have an indirect impact on heart health because these makes people develop unhealthy behaviors such as smoking. The habit itself comes with a set of warning from doctors because this has been known to increase the risk of hypertension. Lawn has seen this happen and has stated this.
“Preventing sexual violence against women, which is important in its own right, may also reduce some of the burden of hypertension in women and benefit their long-term cardiovascular health,” Lawn said.
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