Household chores can send BP soaring!
January 14th, 2011 - 3:09 pm ICT by IANSLondon, Jan 14 (IANS) Doing routine household chores like cooking and cleaning can send your stress levels and blood pressure (BP) soaring.
A study suggests that stresses and strains of life don’t end when we leave work for the day. Instead, the pressure continues to mount up when we return home.
Scientists from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the US recruited 113 men and women in full-time work, the journal Psychosomatic Medicine reports.
Each one provided details on their number of working hours, level of responsibility they took for running home and the chores they did, according to the Daily Mail.
They underwent regular BP checks at a local clinic over a three-week period, before finally wearing a BP monitor for a day to track changes while at work and at home.
The results showed that regardless of the amount of housework actually done, those who felt they were shouldering the responsibility were at the greatest risk of high BP.
The findings suggest it’s not the workload itself but the stress about how to cope with it that causes the damage.
The researchers said: “The perceived responsibility for household tasks, rather than the time spent doing those tasks, is what’s most distressing.”
- Housework 'can be bad for the heart' - Jan 14, 2011
- Working Aussie women refusing to share workload at home - Apr 17, 2011
- Most British women like doing housework - Nov 14, 2010
- 70 pc of Brit women like doing housework - Nov 13, 2010
- Women still work double shifts, as men offer no help: Study - Oct 27, 2010
- Women suffer more than men while commuting - Aug 24, 2011
- British mums don't wish being called housewives - Oct 12, 2011
- Emotional response could predict how your body responds to stress - Feb 18, 2011
- Stress could tell harder on women's hearts - Apr 25, 2012
- 'Homoeopathy growing at 30 percent annually in India' - Sep 11, 2011
- Higher BP may cause you to misread people - Nov 07, 2011
- Get angry easily? Beware of inflammatory diseases - Feb 18, 2011
- Men work equally hard at home - Aug 05, 2010
- Some career women still enjoy doing household chores - Apr 17, 2011
- Brain's response to stress can predict dementia - Nov 10, 2011
Tags: blood pressure, bp, daily mail, full time work, household chores, household tasks, housework, london jan, men and women, pittsburgh school, psychosomatic medicine, running home, school of medicine, scientists, strains, stress levels, stresses, study suggests that, university of pittsburgh, university of pittsburgh school of medicine