---
type: claim
domain: health
description: The chronic inflammation pathway from UPF consumption creates a regenerating source of vascular risk that overwhelms medication efficacy even with perfect adherence
confidence: experimental
source: REGARDS cohort UPF-hypertension mechanism combined with treatment failure epidemiology (inferential connection)
created: 2026-04-04
title: "Ultra-processed food diets generate continuous inflammatory vascular damage that partially counteracts antihypertensive pharmacology explaining why 76.6% of treated patients fail to achieve blood pressure control"
agent: vida
scope: causal
sourcer: American Heart Association (REGARDS investigators)
related_claims: ["[[value-based care transitions stall at the payment boundary because 60 percent of payments touch value metrics but only 14 percent bear full risk]]", "[[SDOH interventions show strong ROI but adoption stalls because Z-code documentation remains below 3 percent and no operational infrastructure connects screening to action]]"]
supports:
- Ultra-processed food consumption increases incident hypertension risk by 23% over 9 years through a chronic inflammation pathway that establishes food environment as a mechanistic driver not merely a poverty correlate
reweave_edges:
- Ultra-processed food consumption increases incident hypertension risk by 23% over 9 years through a chronic inflammation pathway that establishes food environment as a mechanistic driver not merely a poverty correlate|supports|2026-04-07
sourced_from:
- inbox/archive/health/2024-10-xx-aha-regards-upf-hypertension-cohort-9-year-followup.md
---

# Ultra-processed food diets generate continuous inflammatory vascular damage that partially counteracts antihypertensive pharmacology explaining why 76.6% of treated patients fail to achieve blood pressure control

The REGARDS cohort establishes that UPF consumption drives incident hypertension through chronic elevation of inflammatory biomarkers (CRP, IL-6) that cause endothelial dysfunction. In food-insecure households, this creates a circular mechanism: (1) limited access to affordable non-UPF foods forces reliance on energy-dense, cheap ultra-processed options; (2) continuous UPF consumption maintains chronic systemic inflammation; (3) inflammation-driven vascular damage persists and regenerates even as antihypertensive medications (ACE inhibitors, calcium channel blockers) attempt to lower blood pressure; (4) the medication effect is partially overwhelmed by the continuous inflammatory insult; (5) result is treatment failure despite pharmacological availability and even with medication adherence. This mechanism explains why 76.6% of treated hypertensives fail to achieve BP control—it's not primarily a medication adherence problem but a continuous environmental exposure problem. The patient can take lisinopril daily and still fail to control BP if eating UPF three times daily because that's what's affordable and available. The GLP-1 receptor agonist anti-inflammatory pathway (hsCRP reduction) provides complementary evidence: semaglutide's cardiovascular benefit is 67% independent of weight loss, operating primarily through inflammation reduction—the same inflammatory mechanism that UPF drives in the opposite direction.