From High Blood Pressure To Heart Attack, And Kidney Problems

We’ve all seen them - the cholesterol commercials that implant vivid images into our minds. They play on human emotion regarding the many dangers associated with elevated cholesterol. They tell you that drugs can effectively help you lower your LDL, or “bad” cholesterol levels, while improving your HDL, or “good” cholesterol. However, what the advertisers fail to tell you is that most doctors recommend that all nonpharmacologic options be exhausted before you even begin thinking about taking prescription medications.

This means adjusting diet and lifestyle to lower cholesterol and learning about your risk factors (e.g. family history) rather than being dependant upon a given medication. But in our society, where convenience is a cultural mindset, it seems that the majority would rather take a pill for their ailment instead of exercising and adjusting certain dietary and lifestyle components.

Blood is carried from the heart to all parts of your body in vessels called arteries. The pumping action of the heart must create enough force to push blood through the major arteries, into the smaller arteries, and finally into the tiny capillaries, where the porous walls permit fluid exchange between the blood and body tissue. The actual mechanisms which explain why the blood pressure is high has to do mainly with the constriction of the small arterioles which are in all of the tissues of the body. The body is usually successful at providing enough blood around the obstruction, but the pressure is low, including the pressure to the kidneys. In this way, that kidney may produce enough blood pressure to satisfy itself, while the rest of the body sees very high pressures as a result.

With high blood pressure, the heart works harder, your arteries take a beating, and your chances of a stroke, heart attack, and kidney problems are greater. It can enlarge the heart, create small bulges (aneurysms) in blood vessels, damage the blood vessels in the kidneys, harden arteries, produce bleeding in the eyes. In this situation, the kidney which is blocked doesn't "see" enough blood pressure, and releases chemicals causing the blood pressure to go up. If high blood pressure is left unchecked, it can cause blood vessels in the kidneys to become thickened and narrowed, possibly leading to reduced blood supply and reduced kidney function. It is a major cause of kidney failure (renal failure) which may require dialysis Heart Failure is a frequent occurrence in long standing hypertension. Treating and controlling your hypertension can help prevent damage to your heart, brain, kidneys, blood vessels, and eyes.

Experts recommend investigation of patients who seem to be at above average risk on such epidemiological grounds as age and sex or on the presence of symptoms or signs of specific disorders. Many patients eventually require two or more drugs to effectively control their blood pressure. However, in some patients-- especially those who have made lifestyle modifications such as losing weight-- may be able to modify their antihypertensive medication regimen after hypertension has been controlled for at least one year. In patients with high blood pressure, side effects and costs of medications are also factors which weigh heavily on which agent if any is prescribed. For any number of reasons, patients may not take their drugs as prescribed or may not take them at all.

High blood pressure is a problem that won't go away without treatment and changes to your diet and lifestyle. The goal of treatment is to reduce your blood pressure to normal levels with medicine that's easy to take and has few, if any, side effects. Your physician will use both the systolic and the diastolic blood pressure to determine your blood pressure category and appropriate prevention and treatment activities. For the physician, it is a difficult area due to the fact that patients don't feel bad, yet must be prescribed medicines which can be costly and have side effects which make the patient feel worse than they did prior to treatment. If your blood pressure has remained stubbornly high despite taking at least three medications, including a diuretic, you may have resistant hypertension - blood pressure that is resistant to treatment. If these causes of resistant hypertension aren't to blame or treatment doesn't work, talk to your doctor about joining a clinical trial for high blood pressure.