Not only does going to church make you fatter, going to church could also increase your blood pressure.
Although faith in a higher power may bring you great comfort, leading a religious life won’t help reduce high blood pressure. In fact, a small study found that people who tried to incorporate religion into all aspects of their lives were the most likely to have high blood pressure.
But that doesn’t mean that church attendance or a deep faith can cause high blood pressure. “I don’t think the take-home message from this study is that church is causing hypertension,” said one of the study’s authors, Amy Luke, an associate professor in the department of preventive medicine and epidemiology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.