Everybody desires to stay healthy and live long life. We do every thing, we eat, we sleep, but not in a proper manner. And one day suddenly we complain of tiredness, headache or drowsiness. We consult our doctor. He first checks the heart rate with stethoscope and blood pressure with sphygmomanometer. He says you are suffering from hypertension.
What do we understand from hypertension?
Let’s divide the word into two Hyper and tension. High or elevated and tension or pressure. It’s always related to the blood pressure. One beat, one pump. Whenever our heart beats, it pumps the oxygenated blood through arteries to other parts of the body.
Beating of heart is a layman’s term. Heart contracts and relaxes which we call a heart beat, but in scientific term it’s the systolic and diastolic pressure. Systolic pressure is created at the end of cardiac cycle and diastolic pressure is created at the start of the cardiac cycle. Systolic is the high pressure when heart contracts or pumps the blood in the arteries and diastolic is the low pressure when the heart is filled with blood.
Normal blood pressure is 120/80 mmHg. But in the case of hypertension it is greater than 160/100 mmHg.
What causes this pressure to increase?
Heart receives the blood through veins and pumps the blood through arteries. Arteries supply oxygen and nutrients to the cells in the body. In case of hypertension, these arteries are hardened or passage becomes narrower. Hardening is because of aging or calcification which is called as arteriosclerosis. Lumen becomes narrower and this is coined as arteriosclerosis because of deposition of cholesterol.
Now in this case if blood flows into the arteries it creates pressure on the blood vessels. This is what is blood pressure or hypertension.
We never come to know that we are suffering from hypertension and that is why it is a silent killer.
The exact cause of hypertension is not always known and therefore is called as essential or primary hypertension. Then there is umpteenth number of reasons behind it like overweight, smoking, alcoholism, stress and so on.
If the cause is known it is called as secondary hypertension a well known example of this is Cushing’s syndrome. It’s a hormonal disorder of cortisol that could be because of glucocorticoid drugs. One more example is kidney disease. If there is a cyst in kidney or inflammation in glomerulus or stenosis in renal artery then hypertension may occur.
Kidney plays major function as it is the site where salt absorption and excretion take place. So as to cope up with high blood pressure kidney releases salt and water, and in case of low blood pressure it retains salt and water. Therefore the sodium, potassium balance should be maintained.
But there is nothing to worry about. Every disorder can be checked and brought under control. Like Creatinine testing is done to check the renal dysfunction. Electrocardiogram is done to check the changes in cardiac cycle.
Now we know what exactly hypertension is. We should not be afraid of it. Taking appropriate steps and diet regime we can definitely kick hypertension away from our lives.
We always start our day praying god to keep us healthy and away from all ailments. And why not? This is the only life which we have to live to the fullest. But life is not an easy path to walk on. Sometimes we have to face agony of life.
Christine Crotts loves to cook in her kitchen with a crowd seated around the kitchen island. Christine has written a site with reviews of custom kitchen islands, as well as a review of country kitchen islands.
