What is Hypertension?

Hypertension or High Blood Pressure actually is not a disease but a symptom of certain diseases characterized by increased blood pressure in the long run that could interfere the function or even destroy a specific target organ such as brain, kidney, liver, heart, and eyes.

What causes of hypertension?

Causes of high blood pressure can be divided into two factors:

- Primer, if hypertension is no known reason.
- Secondary, if the cause is known as chronic kidney disease, oral contraceptives or others.

Why hypertension occurs?

High blood pressure occurs because two main factors, the heart and blood vessels.
The occurrence of hypertension caused by as following:

1. Heart pressure increases.
This usually occurs because of hormonal influences such as the use of contraceptives that contain hormones (injection, pills, and implants), psychological factors, and also certain drugs which stimulate the heart.

2. Blood vessels are narrowed.
This occurs because the muscles of blood vessels contracted became narrowed or accumulation of certain substances in the blood vessel walls.
The narrowing can occur due to psychological factors, increased hormone adrenaline, drinking coffee, and can also occur because the blood vessels are squeezed by the muscles of the body or fat due to obesity.
The accumulation can be a calcification, fatty, and so forth.

3. Vascular stiffness.
This often occurs due to aging.

4. Thickness (viscosity) of blood is high.
This is because a lot of fat or calcification as well, and so forth.

5. Increased blood volume.
This is because much fluid into the blood vessels. This is due to the high osmolarity of blood vessels, for example by consuming lots of salt.

High blood pressure usually occurs not only on the reason above, but it is a combination of some of the reason above. Or one might be causing for other reasons.

Who is at risk of developing hypertension?

Several factors affected the risk of hypertension are as follows:

- Age: > 40 years.
- Race: Blacks > Whites.
- Genetic or hereditary factors.
- Community: Urban > Rural.
- Geographic: Beach > Mountains.
- Sex: Female > Male.
- Body shape: Fat > Thin.
- Stress.
- Diet: high salt, high in fat.
- Drinks: Drinks that contain alcohol and sodium.
- Smoking: Smokers (including passive smokers) > no-smoke.
- Diabetes.
- Hormonal contraception: the risk rises with length of use (± 12 years in a row).

When suspected have hypertension?

Here is the classification applicable to the present and if the measurements were taken 2 times with 1-2 weeks intervals.

Classification: Normal.
- Systolic: <120 mm Hg, and Diastolic: <80 mm Hg.

Classification: Pre-hypertension.
- Systolic: 120-139 mm Hg, or Diastolic: 80-89 mm Hg.

Classification: Hypertension level-1.
- Systolic: 140-159 mm Hg, or Diastolic: 90-99 mm Hg.

Classification: Hypertension level-2.
- Systolic: > or equal 160 mm Hg, or Diastolic: > or equal 100 mm Hg.

What are the complications of hypertension?

- Brain: Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA) or stroke.
- Eyes: Retinopathy (can cause blindness).
- Cardiac: Left ventricular hyperthrophy (enlarged heart).
- The blood vessels of the heart: heart failure.
- Kidney: Chronic renal failure.

What to do when exposed to hypertension?

What to do when experiencing hypertension is blood pressure control to prevent complications.

1. Controlling without medications.

a. Control of risk factors.
Closely as possible risk factors already mentioned above to be reduced.

b. Promote health factors in order to control risk factors.
- Lose weight if you considered as obesity.
- Restriction of salt intake.
- Stop alcohol consumption.
- Regular exercise.
- Healthy diet.
- Get plenty of rest and avoid stress.
- Provision of potassium from the foods (vegetables and fruits).

c. Hypertension Diet.

For hypertension patients or who have a family history of hypertension should be careful of foods that trigger the onset of hypertension, such as:

- All foods (including fruits and vegetables that processed by using salt or soda), biscuits, bacon, ham, beef jerky, shredded, canned vegetables, canned fish, corned beef, dried shrimp, salted egg, salted mustard, pickles, etc.

- Bovine brain, bovine kidney, cheese, etc.

- Butter and regular margarine.

- Cooking: salt, baking powder, baking soda, MSG, soy sauce, shrimp paste, tomato sauce, paste, etc.

2. Controlling with medications.

- Mild to moderate hypertension, tried firs with drug-free treatment for 2-4 weeks.

- If nothing changes, your doctor will suggest the use of drugs in accordance with your condition.
Consult with your doctors deeply, because all drugs involve risks of side effects, both short- and long-term use.

- Treatment should be done with the lowest dose, periodically evaluated, and the possibility of increased dose. In this case, older patients should be careful.

- If you have other diseases besides hypertension, you should tell your doctor, because other disease may be the base factor of the emergence of hypertension.
In addition, the drugs itself can cause the risk of other diseases, and the effect on certain disease, such as in asthma patients then the use of beta-blockers are not recommended.

- Check your blood pressure regularly, at least once a month.
This is to avoid complication that can occur, because blood pressure often rises but no complaints.

See also how homeopathic remedies to treat high blood pressure.

Cholesterol
Lot of people now aware with cholesterol level.
Why? It’s because the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Due to the deposition of plaques of atherosclerotic caused by large of cholesterol on the walls of the vessels known to be significant cause of narrowing of arteries (coronary arteries).
As a result, it will reduce flow rate especially for flow that depend on the radius fourth power.
Finally, the risk of coronary heart disease and atherosclerosis become increase.

The most factor that influence the raising blood cholesterol levels is eating foods that high in saturated fat. Therefore, Nicotine will increase cholesterol deposition in the walls of blood vessels.

Cholesterol levels
A level of cholesterol <200 mg/dl (300 mg/dl (>7.8 mmol/l) is considered as a very high level.

Anyway some people with cholesterol level bellow than 200 mg/dl may also have a risk of cardiovascular diseases because lipoproteins carrying cholesterol and fats in the blood (type of lipoprotein they possess).

Treatment
The main purpose of any treatment for cholesterol is lowering LDL under 160 mg/dl for people that have no heart disease or lower risk of them.

For the people that have heart disease is under 100 mg/dl. (Recommended by FDS guidelines).
Since with low HDL level may increase risk of heart disease, then the main goal for all patients is more than 35 mg/dl.

Conventional treatment regarding to high cholesterol are exercise, weight loss, diet, quit smoking.
Alternative treatment such as high doses of niacin, soy protein, algae, garlic and other medicine supplement are other effective way to control cholesterol level.

If blood pressure remains high it can start to damage the blood vessels, which, in turn, can lead to heart attack, stroke, heart or kidney failure or eye damage.
If you have hypertension, reducing your blood pressure by 5mmHg can reduce your risk of having a heart attack by about 20%.

For reducing of LDL, people who have heart disease may prevent heart attacks and strokes in the further, get prolong and improve the quality of their lives, and make slow or reverse cholesterol buildup in the arteries.
Anyway for people without heart disease, lowering LDL can decrease the risk of a first heart attack or stroke.

See also how homeopathic remedies treat cholesterol.