What’s considered hypertension? Hypertension is the chronic increase of blood pressure above what are considered normal levels. Blood pressure fluctuates during the day; this is normal and nothing to be alarmed about. For example, it might go up to 130/100 during physical exercise or go down to 100/70 during sleep but its supposed to be in between 110/70 and 120/80 in normal conditions. Normal conditions are considered to be a temperature of 25?C with the person sitting down or lying down, not having eaten or smoked in the last half an hour and having relieved the bladder. If under these circumstances and after several takes the patient still shows a blood pressure of over 140/90 the individual is considered to be affected by hypertension.
How to measure hypertension? The inflatable rubber cuff should be placed a few centimeters up from the elbow and a stethoscope placed gently over the brachial artery. The cuff should be at the level of the heart. Inflate the cuff then release the air at a rate of 5mmHg per second. The first sound heard is the systolic pressure, keep deflating it and when the sound dies of or abruptly gets lower that’s the diastolic pressure. This is why we have two numbers for blood pressure so in 110/70 the systolic blood pressure is 110mmHg and the diastolic blood pressure is 70mmHg.
Repeat the procedure after 5 minutes. Blood pressure should be taken in normal conditions as explained before.
Symptoms – Hypertension shows no symptoms in the early stages and only when the blood pressure has increased far beyond even hypertension levels small symptoms such as headaches may present themselves. However, from the start at 140/90 hypertension starts to have different effects on the organism and can lead to different life threatening illnesses.
Complications of hypertension Complications of hypertension vary but the most important one and the ones that take more lives are without doubt cerebrovascular accidents such as strokes and heart attacks as the hearts walls tend to reduce in size as a result from the constant high blood pressure.
Hypertensive retinopathy can also be added to this category. The retina lies between a very vascular tissue known as the sclerotic and the humor vitreous. Constant high blood pressure in the sclerotic and no increase in the pressure from the humor vitreous can make the retina split leaving the patient blind.
Hypertensive nephropathy is another illness that can be caused by a constant high blood pressure. Kidneys have a vast network of arteries, being the ones responsible for “cleaning up” the blood of the organism. High blood pressure can cause damage to them and lead to kidney failure.
There are other complications of high blood pressure but most of the time one of the above takes the life of the patient before any other symptoms can present.
How to prevent high blood pressure? High blood pressure can be prevented in one way. Changing the lifestyle pattern by exercising regularly, keeping a normal weight, not smoking, eating normal quantities of salt can all be ways of preventing high blood pressure but the disease itself has no cure; it’s a treatable disease but not a curable one which requires the use of pills at high levels.
Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Hypertension
