Hypertension or high blood pressure is a condition in which there is excessive force being applied by the blood against the walls of the arteries. Another way of looking at hypertension is that it is a disease that kills you silently since the main symptoms only start to show up when the condition is in an advanced stage and when the consequences can be very severe. The simple truth is that hypertension can exist without your even knowing about it while all the time it will be doing damage to the heart, arteries as well as to the kidneys. In extreme cases, it can also lead to atherosclerosis and even to stroke.

Different Reasons

There are many different reasons why hypertension develops and even a doctor cannot know of all the causes during the preliminary examination. The factors that do contribute to high blood pressure are many and include alcohol problems, obesity and too much salt intake as well as stress. In addition, the genes too can play a part in development of the disease and leading a sedentary lifestyle too puts you at risk of hypertension as too does insufficient calcium.

Hypertension also creeps up on you without giving any prior warning and mostly a person will not notice any immediate signs and symptoms during the initial stages of the disease. The best way to know of the problem is to have regular medical checkups which are when doctors can take your blood pressure reading and determine whether you have hypertension.

In a majority of cases people find out about their hypertension problem after visiting a doctor that will take their blood pressure readings (systolic as well as diastolic). The former type of reading refers to the pressure being exerted against the walls of the arteries at the time the heart completes its pumping out of blood. The latter kind (diastolic) reading is the pressure exerted by blood on the walls of the arteries between each heartbeat. Such readings must be taken when the heart is in a relaxed state and when it is filling it with blood.

Mostly, doctors recommend to patients suffering from hypertension that they change their lifestyles including altering their diets and in addition the doctor can also prescribe medications to help normalize the patient’s blood pressure.

Pulmonary hypertension is another kind of high blood pressure condition and one that involves flow of blood through a person’s lungs and also to the right side of their hearts. The difference between pulmonary and normal hypertension is that the latter involves flow of blood through the arterial system and the left side of the heart while the former deals with flow of blood through the pulmonary arterial system and the right side of the heart.