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Cardiovascular Recovery From Acute Laboratory Stress: Reliability and Concurrent Validity

From the University of Pittsburgh (T.R.), Pittsburgh, PA, and the University of British Columbia (W.L., D.P.), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Address reprint requests to: Thomas Rutledge, PhD, 1007 South Trenton Ave. 14, Pittsburgh PA 15221. Email: dr.tom{at}musclemail.com

OBJECTIVE: We assessed the value of laboratory measures of cardiovascular recovery across four criteria: reliability across multiple tasks, reliability across a 3-year time interval, ability to predict daily ambulatory blood pressure, and interrelationships with coronary risk factors and psychosocial variables.

METHODS: Three hundred twenty-nine healthy adults (mean age = 27.1 years) completed a two-part protocol consisting of 1 day of laboratory testing and 1 day of ambulatory monitoring. The laboratory protocol included a 15-minute baseline assessment followed by three 5-minute laboratory challenges (mental arithmetic, speech, and handgrip). Five-minute recovery periods followed each exercise. One hundred twenty-five participants returned after 3 years to repeat the protocol.

RESULTS: When aggregated across tasks, cardiovascular recovery showed acceptable levels of internal consistency ( values = 0.7) and proved relatively stable across time (r values = 0.22–0.35). Recovery values statistically improved the prediction of daily ambulatory readings above baseline and stress reactivity laboratory values (p values < .001) but were largely unrelated to coronary risk factors or psychosocial measures.

CONCLUSION: These results suggest that cardiovascular recovery from acute laboratory stress can be treated as a stable individual difference variable that can improve standard laboratory-based predictor models of ambulatory readings.

Key Words: blood pressure, • reactivity • recovery, • stress • laboratory testing.

Abbreviations: DBP = diastolic blood pressure; HR = heart rate; SBP = systolic blood pressure.

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