High Blood Pressure

 

Arteries are blood vessels. They receive blood that is pumped to them by the heart. The walls of the arteries experience a force that pushes them because of the forceful flow of the blood. If the blood flow faces resistance in the vessels, it leads to blood pressure. The other name for high B P is hypertension.

 

High blood pressure is a very common disease all over the world and at least 65 million Americans suffer from high BP.

 

Because it creeps up silently, most people are not even aware that they have contracted high blood pressure. It does not initially give out any warning symptom. But it can lead to serious long term complications that may hasten sudden death.

 

In USA, the second most common reason for visiting a doctor’s chamber is high blood pressure.

 

You can measure high BP with the help of a BP cuff and two numbers are recorded to show high blood pressure like 130/90 mm Hg i.e. millimeters of mercury.

 

Causes of High Blood Pressure

Since high blood pressure is the silent killer, the causes behind it remain unknown in ninety to ninety five percent of the cases. Its other name is primary or essential hypertension. Other factors which trigger off secondary hypertension which accounts for the remaining cases of high blood pressure are:

 

  • An increasing narrowness of select arteries
  • Being born with an aorta that has a structural abnormality. In other words, aorta is the large blood vessel that leaves the heart.
  • An abnormality in the kidney.

 

But these problems are treatable and can be rectified through medical intervention, diagnosis and tests.

 

Symptoms

  • Nausea
  • Blurred vision
  • Dizziness
  • Headache
  • Bleeding through the nose

 

But these symptoms are vague and general and may be misinterpreted for other kinds of disorders.

 

Effects of High Blood Pressure

It increases manifold the risk of kidney failure, congestive heart failure, cardiac arrest, stroke especially if combined with smoking and obesity, heart disease, aortic aneurysms or aortic outpouchings, peripheral artery disease, transient ischemic attack or TIA or mini stroke, damage to the eye tissues resulting in loss of vision.