CORTISOL MAY BE THE DRIVER OF RESISTANT HYPERTENSION You take your blood pressure meds. You watch your salt. You do everything right—so why won’t those numbers budge? A major new study from Mount Sinai suggests the answer might be hiding in plain sight: your hormones, specifically cortisol. Cortisol is often called the “stress hormone.” It’s what gets you through a tough day at work or a late-night deadline. But when your body pumps out too much of it for too long, things can go haywire—especially your blood pressure. The MOMENTUM study, the largest of its kind in the U.S., found something surprising: more than a quarter of people with stubborn, hard-to-treat high blood pressure had elevated cortisol. That’s 27% of patients—far beyond what doctors ever expected. And for the nearly 10 million Americans with so-called “resistant hypertension” (high blood pressure that sticks around no matter how many pills you take), this could finally be a missing piece of the puzzle. What Is Resi...