Thanksgiving is traditionally a time for family, food and fun. Does that time-honored tradition make us more relaxed? Or does the shopping, cooking, and traveling make for a stressful time? Are you better off basking in the Florida sun or cozying around the fire in Maine?
Qardio’s data science team set out to answer these questions by crunching the numbers on tens of thousands of anonymized measurements taken by QardioArm blood pressure monitor users across the nation. And the evidence was pretty clear.
Not only did blood pressure drop meaningfully over Thanksgiving Day itself, even more for women than for men, but the data shows the Southern and Western states recorded by far the biggest drop. So spending time with those close to your heart is actually good for your heart!
“Close to your heart, good for your heart” – Americans show drop in their overall blood pressure levels this Thanksgiving.
Above are data visualizations summarizing the effects of Thanksgiving holidays on systolic blood pressure. Diastolic blood pressure followed a similar trend, with the average blood pressure for the month of November coming down from 132/80 to an average blood pressure of 128/72 on Thanksgiving Day.
Technical note on the analysis: These results are derived from an aggregate analysis on anonymized data from thousands of QardioArm blood pressure monitor users in the US. The data was pulled during the period between November 1st and November 30th, from users that selected to geo-locate their blood pressure readings. All results are statistically significant
