Ava Austi
AP Biology
Current Event #5
October 19, 2017
Women Are More Likely to Address High Blood Pressure
Bakalar, Nicholas. “Women Are More Likely to Address High Blood Pressure.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Oct. 2017.
In the article, “Women Are More Likely to Address High Blood Pressure” by Nicholas Bakalar from The New York Times, it discusses how women are more apt than men to control their blood pressure. High blood pressure damages the inner lining of the arteries, limits the ability of the heart to pump blood and strains the organ in a way that can lead to heart failure. The condition increases the risk for stroke and vascular dementia, and hypertension is one of the most common causes of kidney failure. It impairs vision by damaging the blood vessels in the eyes. But the disease usually has no symptoms, and of the 29 percent of Americans who have high blood pressure, fewer than half have it under control. Among those aged 18 to 39, women had a 62.6 percent rate of controlled hypertension, compared with 15.5 percent among men. At 60 and older, rates did not differ by sex. According to Dr. Peter Muennig, a professor of health policy and management at Columbia University who was not involved in the report, younger men take more risks than women in general. Although men are diagnosed with hypertension at similar rates, they are less likely to take the necessary medication. “It’s difficult for people to take medicine every day,” Dr. Muennig said. “And even if they do, it’s hard to control blood pressure — dosages vary, multiple medicines are often necessary, they have unpleasant side effects.” Even though there are effective treatments, lowering blood pressure can be challenging.
10/20/17
ReplyDeleteCurrent Event #5: “Women Are More Likely to Address High Blood Pressure”
Isabel Sondey
Bakalar, Nicholas. “Women Are More Likely to Address High Blood Pressure.” The New York
Times, The New York Times, 19 Oct. 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/health/high-blood-pressure.html?rref=collection%
2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
Ava’s current event centered around the observation that women are more capable of controlling their blood pressure than men. Ava does a very nice job of introducing the importance of her topic in order to connect her topic to the audience. She discusses how high blood pressure is an issue affecting 1.13 billion people worldwide, and 1 in 3 Americans, so it is therefore a problem so great in scale that it cannot be ignored. Ava effectively includes statistics such as these two in order to further her points in a meaningful way to the audience; inclusion of those statistics helps put the information in perspective. Ava is successful in summarizing her article in a clear, concise way, providing adequate background information. She discusses how high blood pressure results in damage to the inner linings of a person’s arteries, increasing the risk of stroke, vascular dementia, and hypertension. Additionally, Ava effectively includes a quote from a professional in the field to validate one of her central points. She states that the number of men diagnosed with hypertension is quite similar to the number of women diagnosed with the same condition, yet men are less likely to take the recommended medication regularly. After introducing this claim, she supports it by citing Dr. Muennig, a professor of health policy management at Columbia University, which strengthens her argument.
One thing Ava could have done better was discuss the research conducted in a little bit more depth. She presents a few findings of the research study, stating that women ages 18-36 displayed 62% controlled hypertension and men in the same age range displayed 15.5% hypertension; however, she does not fully explain what this means in the context of the underlying research question. The addition of some analysis of the research would help the reader better understand what these findings show as well as what their implications are. Ava also does not thoroughly explain why it is that women are able to control their blood pressure in a way that men are not. The answer to this is crucial in order to fully understand this topic, so the inclusion of some information on why this occurs would help further the reader’s understanding of the research.
I selected to read this article because its title was immediately appealing to me. After reading “Women Are More Likely to Address High Blood Pressure,” I became interested in learning why and how this occurs. I would never have guessed that ability to control blood pressure would be impacted by gender. This discovery could lead to additional findings on ways to control blood pressure. Since the issue of high blood pressure is one that is far-reaching in the number of people in effects, the discovery of a way to minimize this problem would have great impacts. Developing an understanding of how women are able to keep hypertension under control may allow us to create new treatment options for people suffering from high blood pressure. Studying how women control their blood pressure can allow us to use those same methods on others.
Mia Gradelski
ReplyDeleteAP Biology
Mr. Ippolito
November 20, 2017
Bakalar, Nicholas. “Women Are More Likely to Address High Blood Pressure.” The New York
Times, The New York Times, 19 Oct. 2017,
After reading Ava’s informative review on the article, “Women are more likely to address High Blood Pressure,” I had gotten lots of important points on how this can be related to my personal health and well being as a woman. At the beginning of the article, readers were immediately introduced to the article by being provided a brief summary of what the article discusses. Ava did this very well by initially providing information regarding what high blood pressure is to those who are informed. In addition, she immediately leads us into statistics which were nicely backed up by evidence of Dr. Peter Muennig, a professor of health policy at Columbia University. When she states, “but the disease usually has no symptoms, and of the 29 percent of Americans who have high blood pressure..” describes the two opposing sides that Ava is nicely referencing, to give readers two different perspectives to look at. Lastly, Ava did a great job showing the author’s bias by writing, “The condition increases the risk for stroke and vascular dementia” as other scientists might disagree on the side-effects.
Although Ava’s review was excellently done, at times I did encounter minor areas of improvement that could've been fixed. Overall, her essay did not have any grammatical mistakes, but the layout and font of the review tripped me up. Each paragraph seemed to be in a different text, font, and size which doesn’t look that appealing to read. When she begins with the lines, “High blood pressure affects 1.13 billion people..” I was immediately thought I was reading another article due to the inconsistent outlining when she pasted her review. In order to fix this, I would recommend looking over the entire review before submitting it onto the blog. Next, although Ava included many statistics and evidence regarding how multiple medicines have “unpleasant side effects,” at times I felt she overloaded the reader with evidence from the text to either make her review longer or wordy. Specifically when she says, “Among those aged 18 to 39, women had a 62.6 percent rate of controlled hypertension, compared with 15.5 percent among men.” While reading I feel overwhelmed by many of these numbers. In order to fix this, I would either not include all of this information, pick out the most vital information that strongly supports your case, or provide it somewhere else inside your essay.
Even though I knew general information about the effects of high blood pressure and what it can cause to the body, I didn’t know that women have a higher chance of obtaining it. I was shocked by all the statistics thinking that women tend to be more picky when it comes to eating, but didn’t realize that other factors such as stress can cause it to rise. This reason of curiosity was the main reason I chose to comment on this review. Now, it certainly changes the way I think about how to control by body in a more healthy and stress free way.