Influence of fitness and gender on blood pressure responses during active or passive stress

We examined hemodynamic and autonomic components of blood pressure responses during active and passive stressor tasks in a sample of young, normotensive men and women who were physically active but differed on fitness (i.e., VO2peak). During the hand cold pressor, increases in systolic blood pressure were inversely related to fitness among women but not men. Regardless of gender, fitter participants had a greater increase in cardiac pace during mental arithmetic, coherent with a decreased cardiac-vagal component of heart rate variability, and a greater compensatory reduction in stroke volume. Fitness was otherwise unrelated to changes in cardiac output and vascular resistance during the stressor tasks. Our findings suggest that cardiorespiratory fitness augments the cardiac-vagal withdrawal that is characteristic of mental arithmetic. The blunted systolic blood pressure response to the hand cold pressor among fitter women suggests that cardiorespiratory fitness should be considered as a covariate in studies that examine the hand cold pressor as a predictor of future hypertension among women.