As obesity is continuously rising in the Unites States so is high blood pressure, both conditions being highly intertwined. According to data collected from 30,781 people who participated in two National Health and Nutrition Examination surveys ran from 1988 to 1994 and 1999 to 2004, the percentage of Americans with high blood pressure increased from 50.3 percent to 55.5 percent between 1994 and 2004. In addition to this, people living with prehypertension, a condition prior to hypertension, increased from 32.3 percent to 36.1 percent.

There is still some good news. More exactly, more people are aware that they have high blood pressure, which often runs without symptoms, leading to coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke, kidney failure and other serious health problems. Lack of symptoms earned the disease the nickname “the silent killer.” The survey found an increase of 5 percent in people aware of the condition. Seventy two percent of those with high blood pressure were aware of it, 61 percent were being treated, but only 35 percent had their blood pressure under control.

The average age at which blood pressure started to increase was reported to be 60 for men and 40 for women, the study found.

Lead researcher Paul Sorlie, chief of the Epidemiology Branch in the institute's Division of Prevention and Population Sciences said “additional efforts are need to diagnose, treat and effectively control hypertension.” He further added that the main prevention method for hypertension was first preventing another condition, namely obesity, which affects more than one in four American adults, according to the latest figures released by the centers for Disease Control and Prevention.