What is high blood pressure / Hypertension ?
High blood pressure or hypertension is a condition wherein the blood pressure is too high. Too high blood pressure causes an increased risk of disease.
When blood pressure is too high?
We refer to hypertension if the systolic blood pressure is greater than 140 mm Hg (18.5 kPa), or if the negative pressure is higher than 90 mm Hg (12 kPa). For patients with diabetes mellitus and renal disease are subject to the values 130/80 mm Hg (17 / 10.5 kPa). (International guidelines vary slightly, but all consider diabetes mellitus, kidney disease and cardiovascular disease, the 140/90 mmHg threshold is "unanimously".)
The line between 'normal' and 'hypertension' is arbitrarily determined and depends on when you mention the increased health risk is abnormal. Blood pressure is continuously distributed in the population and tends to rise slowly with increasing age. Higher blood pressure indicates a higher risk of damage to certain organs and mortality, but there is no clear threshold above which the risk suddenly rises.
Partly based on a number of other factors such as history, age, sex, smoking, glucose, cholesterol, family history, alcohol consumption, diet, physical activity is drawn a risk.
The diagnosis of hypertension "should be based on multiple measurements of blood pressure. 2 times per time is measured on the same arm, with one or two minutes apart; the mean value is true. If blood pressure is only slightly elevated, one does several (at least three) readings across a number of months. If the risk is unfavorable, at very high blood pressures, and in the case of organ damage caused by the blood pressure, repeating the measurements in a shorter period of time.
Measurements of blood pressure by the patient at home are a valuable source of information for the physician. It also increases the adherence. Condition is used a calibrated device for the home measurements.
What are the causes of high blood pressure ?
The causes of high blood pressure is not known in approximately 90-95% of the cases. It is called idiopathic or essential hypertension. In the remaining cases, there is generally a cause of renal hypertension, for example, by narrowing (stenosis) in one or both renal arteries (renal artery stenosis). Some rare hormonal disorders, such as hormone-producing tumors (Cushing's disease, pheochromocytoma, Conn's syndrome) may increase blood pressure.
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, described the role of sodium and potassium, in the development of hypertension. In primitive societies with a low sodium and potassium rich diet hypertension is rare. Western diet usually contains the opposite: sodium and low potassium. Sodium has a pressor effect. Due to a relatively large amount of sodium and a relatively small amount of potassium pulls the smooth muscle of the blood vessels together more strongly. In order to continue to pump the blood through the blood vessels, the heart will need to generate a higher blood pressure. Sodium and potassium also affect the way through the RAAS and the sympathetic nervous system (brain -and certain nerve activity) blood pressure is regulated. Again with opposite effects: sodium increase blood pressure, potassium hypertension.
Alcohol contributes to getting high blood pressure. Research by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that about 16% of casess of hypertension is related to alcohol.
Also smoking contributes to an increase in blood pressure. This is due to the vasoconstrictor effects of nicotine (vasoconstriction), as well as by an increase in the heart rate by nicotine.
Eating a lot of licorice can cause high blood pressure because it contains glycyrrhizin.
What Are The Symptoms Of High Blood Pressure / Hypertension ?
Usually gives hypertension entirely asymptomatic. Hypertension is a "silent disease": people with high blood pressure often nothing of this. Headache, in particular in mind, that occurs in the morning, one of the most prominent symptoms of incipient hypertension, but so is still a lot more often omitted. Dizziness, light-headedness and tinnitus are also found.
A tense feeling is more a cause than a consequence of hypertension: adrenaline effect. Women with high blood pressure who have by no heavier periods, which sometimes thought.
Malignant hypertension
There is a rare form of hypertension who is accompanied by noticeable symptoms: headache, confusion, protein in the urine, bleeding in the retina. These malignant (malignant) hypertension is manifested by a rapidly rising sky-high (for example, 250 mm Hg) blood pressure, and will urgently, using drugs intravenously (eg nitroprusside) should be treated.
Consequences and risks of high blood pressure
People with hypertension are at increased risk of dying prematurely from heart disease, stroke or kidney damage.
-Heart Failure. High blood pressure means for the heart that must carry out the additional labor to the blood, at a higher resistance, by pumping the body. As a result, the muscle wall of the left ventricle is in the long run thicker and less flexible, which in time can lead to diastolic heart failure.
-Cardiovascular disease. Hypertension increases the chance of developing atherosclerosis, and thus increases the chance of getting angina pectoris, myocardial infarction, stroke, intermittent claudication.
-Cardiac arrhythmias. Hypertension is a major risk factor in the occurrence of atrial fibrillation.
-Cerebral hemorrhage. The higher pressure in the blood vessels leads to an increased wall stress. This increases the risk of cerebral hemorrhage. Especially if in addition there is a congenital or acquired vascular aneurysms.
-Kidney failure. Loss of protein (albumin) in urine is a sign that the glomerulus, the filter particles having bloedvatjes that form the pro-urine, are damaged by the high blood pressure. If this disease process progresses, it leads to chronic renal failure, and, ultimately, end-stage renal disease. Some 10% of the mortality due to a too high blood pressure is a result of kidney failure.
Upon treatment reduces the risk of a stroke to normal levels and the risk of myocardial infarction reduces considerably. Certain antihypertensive agents (ACE inhibitors) have a beneficial effect on the kidneys.