Environmental effects on cardiovascular reactivity

The hypothesis on which this paper is based states that the environment where subjects live has a modifying effect on their psychophysic reactivity when faced with unknown stressing stimuli. To prove such hypothesis, subjects of an isolated country village were studied. An urban sample was used as control. Vascular reactivity was used to determine psychophysics reactivity. Both groups were submitted in their respective environments to a standardized conflicting stimulus which was produced by a device developed in our laboratory. The variables of cardiovascular reactivity were systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and heart rate (HR). Paired samples by age and basal SBP were used (N = 24 pairs). The results of this experience showed that city dwellers had significantly higher SBP increments than country dwellers. After discussing different variables that may have accounted for these results, it was concluded that city life increases the psychophysics reactivity of city dwellers when faced with stressing stimuli as compared to country dwellers.