Parenthood Linked With Lower Blood Pressure: Study

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Parents have lower blood pressure than adults without children, says a U.S. study.

It included 198 participants, ages 20 to 68, who wore portable monitors that took blood pressure readings three times an hour, 24 hours a day, USA Today reported.

"Women were driving the effect. Women with children had the lowest blood pressure, and women without had the highest," said study co-author Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a psychologist at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

The study, which appears in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine, found no differences between parents with children under age 2, parents with teens and parents with children over 18 years old.

That finding suggests that blood pressure readings indicate "something about the people who choose to be parents, rather than the day-to-day experience of being a parent," Thomas Kamarck, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, told USA Today. He wasn't involved in the study.