According to recent research, men and women who are in the armed services and experience combat, are at increased risk for stress related illnesses. A recent study followed thirty thousand service men and women for three years. The results showed vets who were exposed to combat were more at risk for vascular problems.

"The greatest association in this study was with people who have actually been exposed to multiple episodes of deaths or disaster kinds of circumstances. People who had three or more exposures to those kinds of environments were substantially more likely to subsequently report the development of blood high pressure that they had not had previously," said Dr. Joseph Sacco.

Constant stress especially in war zones, can elevate blood pressure, heart rate and adrenalin. Some doctors believe stress is a link to coronary heart and vascular disease. High blood pressure is also called the silent disease. Dr. Sacco says it rarely has symptoms until it advances, when a person suffers stroke or heart attack.

"High blood pressure puts stress on the arteries that contributes to the deposit of cholesterol in the blood vessels and then those are the things that eventually tend to go to contribute to heart attack," Sacco said.

According to Dr. Sacco, he says prevention is the key. Commit to changing your lifestyle.

"Avoiding some of the high risk behaviors, cigarette smoking. More than small amounts of alcohol is underappreciated as a driver for increased blood pressure. Staying lean, weight loss will lower your blood pressure," said Sacco.

Ethnicity definitely played a role. Within the Caucasian population, 33 percent of the vets developed high blood pressure, 50 percent of the Latino's did of African American population 100 percent of them did. Why? Those factors are still being studied.