Low Blood Pressure

 

The other name for low blood pressure is hypotension. It is a condition when the heart cannot pump sufficient quantity of blood and cannot dispatch an adequate blood supply to the vital organs of the body that leads to the outbreak of symptoms of low blood flow.

 

If low pressure is not accompanied by any sign or symptom, there is no need to worry because it is a safe condition and is not unhealthy generally. You are safe from strokes, heart attacks, cardiac arrests and sudden death.

 

However, if there is an inadequate blood flow to the body’s organs because of low blood pressure condition, then you need to wake up and take notice and seek medical intervention because it might lead to kidney failure, angina, cardiac arrest and strokes. Septic shock is the most lethal outcome.

 

Symptoms

If body organs do not receive sufficient blood due to inadequate blood pressure, the normal function of the body organs will be impaired and the organs may get perennially damaged.
 
The symptoms associated with low blood pressure are:

 

• Fainting
• Dizziness, especially while standing up after remaining seated or after lying down for a long time.
• Light headedness
• Chest pain which happens to be a symptom of another disease Angina or may be a heart attack
• Increase in the levels of creatinine and urea in blood or in medical parlance – elevation of serum creatinine and BUN or blood urea nitrogen. Rapid failure of vital organs like brain, lung, heart, liver, kidneys Septic Shock

 

When you feel faint or dizzy or light headed after suddenly standing up, the condition is known as orthostatic hypotension.

 

Causes of Low Blood Pressure

• Medications
• Heart disease
• Reduced volume of blood
• Starving for a long period and dehydration
• Anorexia nervosa
• Fad dieting for the sake of attaining a size 0 figure

 

Unfortunately, most skinny models, movie stars and young girls and women who ape anorexic celebrities suffer from low blood pressure because they deprive their body of food to stay thin and skeletal.

 

Treatment

There is no generalized treatment as such; treatment, carried out by doctors, will depend on the cause of the low pressure like dehydration, blood loss, septic shock, high BP medications, bradycardia, tachycardia, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, pericardial fluid, postural hypotension, postprandial hypotension, vasovagal syncope and other such causes. Specific causes require specific treatment.