Chronic pain is one of the most common problems.
It can stem from the back, neck, hips, knees, stomach, or even the whole body. For some people, the pain lasts for months or years and slowly becomes part of daily life.
New research now suggests that this long-lasting pain may do more than just affect comfort and movement. It may also quietly raise the risk of developing high blood pressure over time.
High blood pressure, also called hypertension, happens when the force of blood pushing against the walls of blood vessels stays too high for too long. This extra pressure makes the heart work harder and slowly damages blood vessels.
Over time, it increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease, and early death. One of the biggest problems with high blood pressure is that most people do not feel any symptoms until serious damage has already happened.
The new study, published in the journal Hypertension, looked at health data from more than 200,000 adults where researchers wanted to understand whether chronic pain could play a role in who later develops high blood pressure.
The researchers found that adults who lived with long-term pain were more likely to develop high blood pressure than those who did not have pain. The risk was not the same for everyone. People who had pain in many parts of the body had the highest risk.
The more areas that hurt, the greater the chance of later developing high blood pressure. People with pain limited to one area still had a higher risk than pain-free adults, but not as high as those with widespread pain.
One important reason behind this connection appears to be mental health. The study showed that people living with chronic pain were more likely to develop depression. In turn, people with depression were more likely to develop high blood pressure.
People with chronic pain often develop other health problems later in life, including heart disease. Pain is not just a physical feeling, it affects mood, sleep, activity levels, and stress responses and all of these factors are closely tied to blood pressure control.