Blood pressure is the strength of your blood as it flows through your body’s arteries. Blood vessels that bring blood to the rest of your body from your heart are known as arteries.
It pushes blood across your arteries when your heartbeats. When your blood flows, the walls of the arteries are under pressure. This pressure or arterial walls is called blood pressure.
If your blood flows through your arteries at a higher pressure than normal, high blood pressure (also known as hypertension) occurs. There are many different causes of high blood pressure.
It can cause health problems if your blood pressure gets too high or stays high for long. Uncontrolled blood pressure increases your risk of stroke, cardiac disease, heart attack, and renal failure.
Ø High blood pressure is two kinds
1. Primary high blood pressure
This type of hypertension is often known as essential high blood pressure. This is named if the cause of the high blood pressure has not identified. This form of hypertension is the most severe. It usually takes years to develop this type of blood pressure. This probably is due to your environment, lifestyle and how you change your body when you grow older.
2. Secondary High blood pressure
This is when high blood pressure is caused by other health problems or medication. Secondary hypertension is caused by the following factors:
- Sleep apnea
- kidney problems
- some medicines
- adrenal or thyroid gland problems
Ø Causes of Hypertension
Hypertension or high blood pressure is a serious disorder, which can cause a person’s risk of heart attack, stroke and other conditions to damage his or her walls over time.
Physicians are most often unable to find a specific cause of high blood pressure, which is known as essential hypertension. Being overweight, drinking too much beer, too much sugar, cigarettes, and diabetes, other conditions increase the risk of hypertension. Aging also increases the risk of high blood pressure as age increases blood vessel stiffness.
Stress can also temporarily increase blood pressure, but stress is not a proven risk factor. Nonetheless, several studies have linked psychological stress and depression to a high blood pressure risk.
A 2003 study found that people who were time-stressed or sick were more likely to have hypertension than people who did not face time stress over a span of 15 years.
Many causes that induce high blood pressure, but it is unclear what precisely is the cause. The following factors could increase your risk of hypertension:
- Limited physical activities
- Diet high in fats, salt, and cholesterol
- Being overweight and obese
- Chronic disease like diabetes, renal and hormonal issues, and high levels of cholesterol
- Stress
- Family history especially if the high blood pressure is present to your family or other close relatives
- Race (Africans or black people are more likely than people of other races to have high blood pressure)
- Drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco
- Older age (the older you get, the higher the risk of high blood pressure)
- Birth control pills
Many medical conditions and drugs may also increase blood pressure, known as secondary blood pressure. Conditions like chronic kidney disease, preeclampsia during pregnancy, and adrenal gland dysfunction can cause hypertension.
Medicines, such as birth controls, cold remedies, pain relievers on the market, decongestants, and some prescription medicines can lead to temporary increased blood pressure.
Prehypertension can also be caused by increased fatty deposits in the arteries (atherosclerosis). Additional conditions related to prehypertension include:
- Adrenal disease
- Obstructive sleep apnea
- Thyroid disease
- Kidney disease
Ø Treatments of Hypertension
A lifelong commitment is needed in the regulation of your hypertension. You always have to control your weight, make healthy food choices, exercise, and learn how to deal with stress, avoid smoking and reduce the intake of alcohol. You’re going to probably need drugs all your lives to regulate your high blood pressure.
Treatment usually starts with lifestyle changes that can help reduce blood pressure and decrease your risk of heart disease. You may also be prescribed by medications to lower blood pressure from your doctor. These are classified as drugs for antihypertension.
The goal of therapy is to reduce the blood pressure to normal. The drug you use can be easy to take and will have little if any, side effects. This is a very successful treatment.
You will need to take the medicine for the rest of your life if your blood pressure can only be managed by medication.
More than one drug is usually needed to help regulate blood pressure. Don’t stop drug use without speaking to your physician. If not, the risk of a stroke or a heart attack could be increased.
Checking up on your blood pressure is the key factor in maintaining your hypertension. When you don’t know your numbers how could you treat it well? So in order to have an accurate reading of your blood pressures prefer using a BP Calculator by calculators.tech.
The blood pressure calculator provides the most accurate finding of blood pressure. It is often recommended by doctors to receive precise readings. A blood pressure calculator is an online tool and can be found easily on the internet.
With elevated levels of hypertension is along with kidney and heart disorders, your doctor may prescribe changes in your lifestyle in addition to hypertensive medicines.
If you only going through hypertension no other disease, improvements in your lifestyle will help to avoid an increase in blood pressure. Lifestyle changes that can improve lower blood pressure are as follows:
- Eating low-sodium and a healthy diet
- Losing weight if you are obese or overweight
- Doing exercise on a regular basis
- Quitting smoke
- Limit consumption of alcohol
However, many people with high blood pressure will need medication and lifestyle changes. For example, new guidelines recommend that doctors use blood pressures only when they have a cardiovascular “event” such as heart attack or stroke, for patients with stage I hypertension, or if they are highly at risk for heart attack or stroke based on other factors, such as diabetes.
Lifestyle changes should be used for people with stage 1 hypertension who do not meet those criteria. It involves starting the’ DASH’ diet with a high content of fruit, fibers, and vegetables as well as low levels of salt and saturated fats (less than 1500 mg per day); exercising three days a week for at least 30 minutes and restricting consumption of alcohol to less than two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women.
In comparison, stress relief activities such as mindfulness and other strategies for relaxation, especially coupled with other lifestyle changes, can be effective for lowering blood pressure.
There are many types available for patients who need medication and patients may need to take more than one medication to reduce blood pressure. Patients usually require two to three medications to manage their blood pressure sufficiently.
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