High Blood Pressure In Middle-Age Could Fry Your Brain

People in their 40’s with high blood pressure now have another reason to get it down, down down. Researchers at UC Davis are convinced that high blood pressure in people as young as 40 can cause structural damage to the brain–damage that may not be evident in brain function for years to come. A UC Davis news release reports that the researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to look at the white matter and gray matter in the  brains of 579 people, average age 39. They found that people with high blood pressure had damaged white matter, and 9 percent less gray matter. The high blood pressure brains also appeared to age more quickly, so that a typical 33-year-old with high blood pressure had the brain health of a 40-year-old with normal blood pressure. Read more from UC Davis.