Heart & Hypertension (High Blood Pressure)

Your heart & hypertension are related.  Hypertension is the medical term for high blood pressure.  It is a serious condition that can result in damage to your heart, kidneys, and eyes over time or if left untreated.  It can also be responsible for heart attacks and strokes in people, therefore it is important to have your blood pressure checked regularly to ensure that it is within a normal range.  If it is not, then it is important to follow your physician’s advice, which may include prescription medications.  However, it is important to note that you may also be able to lower your blood pressure to a normal range by losing weight, reducing the salt in your diet, quitting smoking, and becoming more physically active.

So what is the reason for hypertension or high blood pressure?  High blood pressure is the result of an increase in the resistance of blood flow through the blood vessel walls, due to the blood vessels being more constricted (this can happen due to smoking) or narrowed by atherosclerosis (the fatty plaque build-up within the artery walls).  This makes it harder for the heart to work, which can lead to damage to the heart if hypertension is left untreated.

The exact cause of high blood pressure though is not always as evident, and can be familial for some people, or may be related to another disease or condition in the body such as certain forms of kidney disease, having an overactive thyroid, and so on, so these sorts of things need to be considered when someone presents with high blood pressure.

So what is classified as high blood pressure then?  The Taber’s Cyclopedic  medical dictionary says that “there are no precise rules concerning what blood pressure reading is considered to represent hypertension.”  However, it is generally agreed that if your systolic pressure (representing when your heart contracts) is over 140, and your diastolic pressure (when your heart is at rest) is over 90 on more than one occasion, that your blood pressure is high.

Here is a video that explains how high blood pressure affects your body: