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CTV: Canadian kids' blood pressure not on the rise

Published: 19 May 2010

There's a little bit of good news on the childhood obesity front. A new Canadian study has found that rates of high blood pressure among Canadian kids are very low. That's despite the fact that there are record levels of obese and overweight children and teens and obesity and high blood pressure generally go hand in hand. The findings, drawn from Statistics Canada's Canadian Health Measure Survey, found that just under one per cent of kids had elevated blood pressure levels and another two per cent had blood pressure readings that were borderline high. "The levels of blood pressure in Canadian youth was not elevated," said Dr. Gilles Paradis, a professor of public health at McGill University in Montreal and lead author of the study.

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