Hypertension

Hypertension is when your blood pressure — or the force of blood flowing through your blood vessels — is too high. Blood pressure typically rises and falls throughout the day, based on your activities and other factors, but when it’s consistently higher than it should be, it can lead to health problems like heart disease.

What Causes Hypertension?

It’s difficult to identify specific causes of high blood pressure — in fact, for many adults, there is no single cause. More likely, hypertension develops over time, due to a combination of known risk factors. These include:

• Age
• Race or genetics
• Family history of high blood pressure
• Lack of exercise
• Excessive sodium in your diet
• Excessive alcohol consumption
• Tobacco use
• Obesity
• Potassium deficiency
• Stress
• Certain chronic conditions like kidney disease, diabetes, sleep apnea, and adrenal and thyroid disorders

Fortunately, knowing the risk factors makes prevention easy.

While age, race and family history are beyond your control, maintaining a lifestyle that addresses other risk factors can do wonders for keeping your blood pressure in a healthy range — and preventing the diseases that high blood pressure can cause. 

• Exercise regularly.
• Moderate your sodium intake.
• Moderate alcohol consumption.
• Do not smoke or use tobacco.
• Find healthy ways to manage and lower your stress.
• Make sure you get enough potassium in your diet.
• Keep yourself at a healthy weight.
• Lower your caffeine intake.
• Get enough sleep.

What Complications Can Hypertension Cause?

The longer high blood pressure goes unchecked, undiagnosed or unmanaged, the more damage it can do — complications from high blood pressure include:

• Heart attack or stroke
• Aneurysm
• Heart failure
• Damaged blood vessels in your kidneys and/or eyes
• Metabolic syndrome
• Damage to memory and/or cognitive function
• Dementia

Detection

Because hypertension is in most cases symptomless, the only real way to know if you have it is to have your blood pressure measured by your provider or another health professional. This is quick and painless, and is a routine part of most provider visits. So, if it’s been over a year since you’ve had one — or if you have any of the risk factors listed above but haven’t been checked for high blood pressure — you should schedule a visit ASAP.

Treatment Options

Fortunately, many cases of hypertension can be treated with simple lifestyle changes — the very same ones recommended to prevent it in the first place. Some can make a difference in just weeks, while others may require longer-term adjustments.

However, in severe cases or when hypertension has begun to cause other complications, medications may be prescribed in combination with lifestyle changes. These can include:

Calcium channel blockers, which widen your blood vessels to decrease blood pressure.

Diuretics, which flush excess water, taking with it excess sodium that is contributing to hypertension.

Beta blockers, which make your heart beat slower and with less force. They also help to widen blood vessels.

ACE inhibitors, which help the body produce less angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE), a chemical that causes the arteries to become narrow.

Angiotensin II receptor blockers, which block the effects of angiotensin on the blood vessels.

Alpha blockers, which relax the arteries and make them more flexible, lowering blood pressure.

Alpha-2 receptor agonists, which slow the activity of the adrenaline-producing portion of the nervous system. Adrenaline increases heart rate, so this action lowers blood pressure.

Central agonists, which act similarly to alpha and beta blockers, decreasing the blood vessels’ ability to contract, which lowers blood pressure.

Peripheral adrenergic inhibitors, which block messages in the brain that instruct smooth muscles to constrict, which reduces blood pressure. These are rarely prescribed, only when other medications have failed to be effective.

Vasodilators, which relax the blood vessel walls, allowing them to dilate and let blood flow more easily.

Source: American Heart Association
 

If you do have hypertension, an AtlantiCare cardiologist can help determine the best course of treatment — and whether that includes lifestyle changes, medication or a combination of both.