Irene is 32 years old and she repeats a phrase almost like a daily mantra: “It doesn’t give me life”. Between work demands, the bombardment of notifications and the constant feeling of being left behind when compared to other people’s achievements —the dreaded FOMO—, their routine is a race without a finish line. Lately he has been sleeping little, living with overwhelming stress and experiencing a persistent helmet-shaped headache, accompanied by fatigue and insomnia, symptoms that experts in Efe Health associate with a silent evil.
What she justified as the typical exhaustion of our generation, in the medical consultation, translated into an unexpected diagnosis: high blood pressure. A disease, a priori almost invisible and associated with the elderly, which is gaining more ground every day in the lives of the youngest.
We are witnessing the collapse of an entire generation trapped in an epidemic of chronic stress and burnout. From an evolutionary point of view, stress is a mechanism designed to save our lives. in the face of imminent dangers. The problem arises when the threat is not a predator, but precariousness and toxic perfectionism. This continuous “allostatic load” triggers cortisol, suppresses the immune system and silently damages the cardiovascular system.
Faced with this emotional discomfort, the body demands a neurochemical rescue. Stress pushes us to the refrigerator looking for a binge on sugars and fats, foods that activate the brain’s reward system and temporarily act as a buffer from anguish. This sedentary lifestyle, added to poor emotional management and high consumption of ultra-processed foods and sodium, has created the perfect vicious circle in the last 20 years.
Furthermore, recent research published in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine have identified using artificial intelligence that sleep disorders (such as waking up short of breath) and energy drink consumption emerge as key modifiable risk factors for early-onset hypertension. All this is critically reflected in the university stage: a cross-sectional investigation in students showed that 68% smoke, 54% sleep less than six hours, 42% are sedentary and 46% report high stress.
An underdiagnosed epidemic
At a global level, the World Health Organization (WHO) alert that 1.4 billion people suffer from high blood pressure, and only one in five has it under control. In Spain, the data published by the portal iHealth They place some 9.8 million adults affected (32% of the population between 30 and 79 years old), achieving control in only 37% of cases.
However, the figures in the young and middle-aged population are alarming. According to the national study Di@bet.esthe global prevalence of hypertension in Spanish adults is 42.6%. However, the most worrying thing is the underdiagnosis of young people: more than 15% of men under 30 years of age, and 27.3% of those between 31 and 45 years of age, have high blood pressure. In fact, young men (18-30 years old) They are the demographic group with the highest percentage of undiagnosed hypertension.
The basic problem is that almost no one suspects a blood pressure problem at age 30. As Dr. José Antonio García Donaire points outpresident of SEHLELHA, the body’s warnings are so diffuse—a headache in the back of the neck, fatigue or some isolated palpitation—that neither the patient nor his doctor thinks of hypertension as the first option. In fact, there is a huge disconnection with reality: the vast majority of university students have heard about the disease, but only 20% really understand the risk to which they are exposed. As if that were not enough, young people who already have a family history come up against an invisible wall: the anxiety and chronic stress they suffer daily dynamite any attempt to keep their heart rate at bay.
The paradox of anxiety and false cures on TikTok
Despite this gloomy outlook, science surprises us with the “paradox of anxiety.” From a biological and evolutionary prism, high levels of neuroticism in its “worried-vulnerable” facet can reduce mortality. These hypervigilant people become less seriously ill because they go to the doctor at the slightest symptom, achieving early diagnoses. Surprisingly, a longitudinal analysis of young and middle-aged adults found that a prior diagnosis of anxiety is significantly associated with a lower risk of developing incident hypertension, underscoring this potential protective effect derived from closer monitoring of one’s health.
Precisely because of this anxiety and constant overstimulation, young people look for desperate remedies on the internet. Some are dangerous, like the radical “dopamine fast” which promotes extreme social isolation and can lead to anxiety and malnutrition. Other trends are purely commercial, like him cozymaxxing, that commodifies our need for mental peace by inciting us to buy very expensive blankets and lamps on TikTok so that our rest is aesthetic. Neuroscience clarifies that the real solution is “slow dopamine”: re-educating the brain with sustained pleasures over time, such as cooking or reading, and not through radical deprivation or impulsive purchases.
To prevent in time, specialists warn of the critical importance that the young population adopts the habit of taking their blood pressure at home, especially if they have genetic factors. The protocol is clear: use a validated arm device, rest thirty minutes beforehand and take several shots on the dominant arm to deliver the stocking to the doctor.
In short, the cardiovascular crisis of young people will not be cured with pills alone. Burnout is systemic. In the face of a paradigm that rewards toxic self-demand, rest, learn to disconnect and allow yourself to “do nothing” have become in the most radical and political preventive acts of our time.
Image | Magnificent
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings