Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of gender, sodium, anger-in, and perceived racism, on cardiovascular reactivity and recovery from laboratory stressors, ambulatory sleep and wake measures, and nocturnal blood pressure dipping. Fifty-three healthy Canadian Black male and female university students participated in a 21-day experimental protocol. Participants were twice exposed to three laboratory stressors tasks, and twice underwent 24-hr ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, at the end of a 10-day regular and a 10-day sodium-loaded diet period, respectively. Cardiovascular measures were recorded at baseline, pre-stress, during the stressor, and post-stress during the recovery period. Self-report measures on anger expression and perceived racism were collected. No effect of sodium on cardiovascular reactivity was found. Marginal findings implicate an interaction between sodium and gender on cardiovascular recovery from stress, and an effect of sodium on nocturnal blood pressure dipping. Gender differences were found for patterns in cardiovascular reactivity to stress, and for ambulatory heart rate measures. No significant findings emerged for effects of anger-in; however an interaction between gender and anger-out on blood pressure dipping is implicated. A significant interaction between gender, stressor type, and perceived racism was found for cardiovascular recovery from stress. Implications of these findings for future research on risk for development of hypertension in the Canadian Black population are discussed.