High Blood Pressure Can Be A Very Dangerous Condition For Which There Is Often Simple Solution

In recent years changes in lifestyle and diet in many western societies have caused a rise in the number of individuals suffering from high blood pressure.

High blood pressure (which is otherwise known as hypertension, or more properly arterial hypertension) can be a dangerous condition that seldom carries any symptoms and which, if not detected and treated, can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure, arterial aneurysm or renal failure - any one of which is a life-threatening condition.

So just what is hypertension and exactly what causes it?

The arteries within your body are continuously filled with blood that produces a normal 'background' pressure on the artery walls. When your heart pumps freshly oxygenated blood around your body it pushes this blood into the arteries which briefly raises the pressure exerted on the artery walls with each heartbeat. These two pressures are referred to as the systolic pressure (the higher pumping pressure of the heart) and the diastolic pressure (the lesser 'background' pressure).

Normal levels of blood pressure vary from one person to the next but, generally, systolic pressure should be around 120 mm Hg and diastolic pressure should be about 80 mm Hg. This is usually written as a pressure of 120/80.

If your blood pressure begins to rise and then remains above 120/80 then you are said to be 'prehypertensive' and, despite the fact that this is not in itself serious, it is a sign that you could be at risk of developing hypertension and all of the problems linked with it. As soon as your blood pressure reaches, and maintains, a level of 140/90 or above then you are suffering from hypertension and action needs to be taken to lower your blood pressure.

So what causes your blood pressure to rise and stay elevated?

Well, there are various factors at play here and to begin there is a group over which you have little, if any, control. This group includes a low weight at birth, a variety of genetic factors, certain types of diabetes (especially type 2 diabetes) and your age (with increasing age our arteries have a tendency to become fibrous and lose their elasticity, producing a smaller cross-sectional area for the blood to flow through).

The second group of factors is much more within your control and includes a sedentary lifestyle, high quantities of salt and saturated fats in your diet, excess weight, smoking tobacco, excessive alcohol consumption, stress and working in certain occupations like flying or motorway maintenance.

Most of these factors are of course treatable and, in a lot of cases, a quite simple change in your diet and the addition of a bit of exercise into your daily plan is all that is needed to reverse the problem. However, the difficulty is that, with few, if any, symptoms, most people do not know that they have hypertension to start with.

So how can you go about solving the problem?

Thankfully the answer to this question is fairly simple. All you have to do is to drop by your doctor's office on a regular basis (about twice a year should be sufficient) and ask him/her to check your blood pressure. The whole process is painless, simple and quick and will provide you with peace of mind and can save your doctor a lot of work, time and expense down the road when you are forced to call in at his office once hypertension has set in.

If you are not all that keen on visiting your doctor then a very good alternative nowadays is to monitor your own blood pressure. A large selection of simple to operate and quite inexpensive blood pressure monitors are available nowadays, allowing you to keep an eye on your health, as well as the health of of your whole family, in the privacy and comfort of your own home.

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