Negative eating and body attitudes are associated with increased daytime ambulatory blood pressure in healthy young women

Background and objective: Various psychosocial stressors have been associated with increased ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) and cortisol in middle-aged women. Given that many young women report negative eating/body attitudes, we examined whether these attitudes were associated with cortisol and ABP in a cross-sectional study.

Methods: 120 non-obese, healthy women aged 19-35 completed questionnaires, measurement of 24-h urinary free cortisol (UFC), and 12-h daytime ABP. Main and interactive effects of eating/body attitudes (average Z-score of Eating/body attitude questionnaires split at zero) and current weight loss effort (yes/no) were examined by General Linear Modeling adjusted for covariates.

Results: Women with negative eating/body attitudes were more likely to report current weight loss attempts (63% versus 21%, p<0.001). Eating/body attitudes or weight loss effort did not have main or interactive effects on age, physical activity level, energy intakes, general stress (average Z-score of psychosocial stress questionnaires) or UFC. Body mass index was higher among those currently trying to lose weight but did not differ by eating/body attitudes. Significant main effects of eating/body attitudes were detected on ABP: diastolic ABP (73.2 ± 0.7 versus 70.3 ± 0.8mm Hg, p=0.011) and mean arterial pressure (87.3 ± 0.7 versus 84.9 ± 0.8mm Hg, p=0.032) were higher among women with negative versus neutral/positive eating/body attitudes. There were no weight loss effort main effects for ABP, or weight loss effort-by-Eating/body attitude interactions.

Conclusion: This exploratory study suggests that more negative eating/body-related attitudes may be modestly associated with higher ABP independent of weight loss effort.