Blood pressure and culture. The contribution of cross-cultural comparisons to psychosomatics.

It is well known that mean blood pressure levels tend to be low in non-westernized tribal peoples and that these levels tend to rise, particularly in the older age groups, among persons of the same origins who come into more contact with modern Western life-styles. That tendency can be attributed to many factors - increased salt intake, increased obesity, acculturation anxiety, information overload, increased competitiveness, envious resentment, etc. Disentangling these various hypothesized factors is virtually impossible when studying patients or population samples from a single sociocultural group, but cross-cultural comparisons may under favorable circumstances permit some such disentangling. Using data from Micronesia, Polynesia, and East Africa, an attempt will be made to assess which types of psychological stress are most likely to conduce to hypertension, and how certain traditional cultures may have been reducing these stresses.