What Is Hypertension?

To explain what hypertension is, you have to understand the concept of blood pressure.

As explained elsewhere on this website, a blood pressure reading is a way of measuring the pressure exerted by the blood against the blood vessel walls as it circulates through the body.

Hypertension is the medical term for what's commonly known as high blood pressure. High blood pressure means your heart has to pump blood harder than it should to assure that your organs are getting the blood they need to function.

What causes hypertension? 

The reason hypertension is a serious health threat is usually because your blood vessels have narrowed and it takes more force to pump blood through your body. As this condition worsens (usually with advancing age), the wear and tear on the heart increases. It also contributes to a condition called atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.

Hypertension and atherosclerosis are major factors that increase the risk that you'll have a heart attack or stroke someday.

Heredity is one of the reasons you get hypertension. If others in your family have had high blood pressure, it's more likely you'll have it too.

But very often, your lifestyle has a lot to do with your risk for getting hypertension.

These lifestyle choices seem to make hypertension more likely:

• alcohol abuse or alcoholism,
• a sedentary lifestyle that includes little or no exercise,
• obesity,
• poor diet and nutrition choices that increase your cholesterol levels.

Kidney problems or kidney disease can also trigger high blood pressure.

Symptoms of hypertension

Hypertension often develops slowly over the course of many years. Very often, hypertension can become dangerous before you ever know you have it because you won't notice a single symptom. This is one of the reasons hypertension has been called a "silent killer."

The subtle, often unnoticeable symptoms include

• occasional dizziness or nausea,
• headache,
• blurred or double vision.

These symptoms are similar to the symptoms of other health problems, however. So the best way to determine if you have hypertension is to have regular blood pressure readings done. This way you'll know for sure that your blood pressure is in the normal range -- or not.

Treating hypertension

If you find out you have hypertension, you'll need to work with your doctor to bring your blood pressure down.

Your doctor will certainly recommend lifestyle change: getting more exercise, eating blood-pressure-friendly foods, and lowering your blood cholesterol levels.

Prescription medications are also available that can help you manage your hypertension. These include diuretics, ACE inhibitors and beta blockers. For a more detailed description of how these medications work, click on blood pressure medications.