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Love-Hate Friendships May Raise Blood Pressure

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Friends who are critical, unpredictable or unreliable may be hard on your heart.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Friends who are critical, unpredictable or unreliable may literally be hard on your heart, a study published Monday suggests.

The study, reported in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, looked at the short-term cardiovascular effects of being with an "ambivalent" friend—someone with whom you have a love-hate sort of relationship.

Researchers found that merely being in the presence of such a friend tended to elevate study participants' heart rate and generally put them "on edge." Moreover, discussing a negative event with an ambivalent friend tended to send up people's blood pressure.

It's not clear what these jolts to the cardiovascular system might mean in the long run. But if such relationships are pervasive in a person's life, they might start to take a health toll, according to Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, an assistant professor of psychology at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and the study's lead author.

Ambivalent friends are the types who leave you uncertain about whether they'll offer support or indifference, understanding or criticism. But they are also people we like and care about, making them distinct from that neighbor or co-worker you actually dislike and avoid.

These mixed emotions may make it difficult to relax around such a friend, and especially hard to find comfort from him or her when something goes wrong, the new study suggests.

The findings are based on tests with 107 healthy young adults who were asked to list up to 10 friends and then rate each of them on a series questions designed to gauge whether the friend was generally supportive or ambivalent.

The researchers then asked each participant to pay a second visit to the lab and bring a particular friend -- in some cases a supportive friend, in others an ambivalent one.

During this second visit, each pair of friends sat in a room together while their blood pressure and heart rate were monitored as they sat quietly and as they had several discussions.

One discussion was "neutral," centering on an everyday routine. The other discussions revolved around an event in the study participant's life, either positive (like getting a job promotion) or negative (like getting fired).

Overall, the researchers found, participants who were with an ambivalent friend showed higher heart rates from the beginning, even before they'd started talking. And when it came time to discuss a negative event, they had a greater spike in blood pressure than participants who were with a supportive friend.

Many studies, Holt-Lunstad told Reuters Health, have found that support from family and friends can buffer people from the effects of stress. But ambivalent friends may not only fail to offer such support, but also be a source of stress themselves, she explained.

So what's the solution? It's probably difficult, if not impossible, to cut off all the ambivalent relationships in our lives, Holt-Lunstad pointed out. In the current study, for example, more than half of all the friendships could be classified as ambivalent.

Then there are those family members, co-workers and neighbors we may not be able to separate from, even if we want to.

Perhaps the best thing to do, Holt-Lunstad suggested, is to spend as much time as possible with the positive people in our lives.

SOURCE: Annals of Behavioral Medicine, June 25, 2007.

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