blood pressure lab #3

Blood Pressure Lab Journal
1. State a problem about the relationship of age and gender to blood pressure.
A problem with age and gender in relation to hypertension is that the older you get the more available you to more things that are not good for you. People begin to lack activities to help thier heart stay strong, and do activities that could destroy you as far as drugs and alcohol.

2. Use your knowledge about the heart and the circulatory system to make a hypothesis about how the average blood pressure for a group of people would be affected by manipulating the age and gender of the group members.
I feel that as you get older the more people will get a higher blood pressure. I feel that men will have a bigger problem then women, because of their built, and the more they eat. Men and women live very different lifestyles, that can also affect a persons blood pressure.

3. How will you use the investigation screen to test your hypothesis? What steps will you follow? What data will you record?
I will be taking ten different blood pressures at a time. There will be a series of 10 groups, 50 women and 50 men. By calculating the results of all the women and all the men. I will record all of my information, especially those with hypertension for that group, and repeat that process for every group.

4. Analyze the result of your experiment. Explain any patterns you observed.
A surprising fact for me was how many more men were hypertensive than women. There were 13 men that were hypertensive with seven of those men in the 45-54 age range. Only five women were hypertensive in the whole experiment. it was steady in both the systolic and the diastolic blood pressure in the male category as the age range increased. The female group had a small decline in the second age group then a steady increase in both the systolic and diastolic blood pressures. A pattern I observed in the woman was that a high salt diet was the biggest factor in hypertension. In men the biggest factor was basically their lack of exercise and was a tie between family history, obesity, and a high salt diet.

5. Did the result of your experiment support your hypothesis? Why or why not? Based on your experiment what conclusion can you draw about the relationship of age and gender to group blood pressure averages?
In my hypothesis I stated that men would have a bigger problem then the women, and that was proven true. Men did result with a higher blood pressure average as age increases, as well as have more hypertensive cases than woman total. In result higher blood pressure did overall increase.

6. During the course of your experiment, did you obtain any blood pressure reading that were outside of the normal range for the group being tested? What did you notice on the medical charts for these individuals that might explain their high reading?
There were 18 total out of normal blood pressure readings in both the experiment. Of those 18, 13 were male and 5 were female. Womenhad a combination of a high salt diet, lack of exercise and obesity seemed to be the leading causes. Men the secondary factors to mostly play into the hypertension were a high salt diet, a family history of hypertension, and obesity.

7. List risk factors associated with the hypertension. Based on your observation, which risk factor do you think is most closely associated with hypertension?
The risk factors associated with hypertension include family history of hypertension, obesity, a high salt diet, a lack of exercise, alcohol consumption, gender, and age. Based on my observation, the biggest risk factor to hypertension would be a lack of exercise.

8. What effect might obesity have on blood pressure? Does obesity alone cause a person to be at risk for high blood pressure? What other factors, in combination with obesity, might increase a person's risk for high blood pressure?
Obesity has had a hug affect of a persons blood pressure. Some one that is over weight and not eating the right food could have a devastating defeat. Obesity, a high salt diet, and a lack of exercise seem to be the deadly combination for hypertension. In this experiment alone, about sixty five to seventy percent of the hypertensive patients had this combination.

Conclusion
It is obvious that men have a bigger problem with high blood pressure and hypertension. Although both men and woman both have risk factors, that can affect someone in the long run. This experiment showed me exactly how important it is to eat right.