Nearly half of all American men and women have high blood pressure or hypertension, putting them at risk of serious medical problems. Yet because hypertension causes no symptoms of its own, many people with the condition don’t even know it — and may not know it until something serious happens.
Why is high blood pressure so dangerous? Blood pressure is simply a measurement of the force your blood exerts as it travels through your body. Your body is “designed” to operate best when blood pressure is within a specific range — ideally below 120/80 mmHg. The added pressure can damage your organs and tissues when blood pressure exceeds that range.
Anthony B. Lewis, MD, FACC, and the team at TLC Medical Group, Inc. help patients manage hypertension with lifestyle changes and medication when needed. In this post, they underscore five of the most serious complications associated with hypertension to help you understand the extreme importance of seeking treatment.
As noted, high blood pressure puts extra strain on your organs, including your heart, leading to hypertensive heart disease. In addition to damaging the organ directly, hypertension damages the arteries that supply your heart with blood (the coronary arteries), contributing to the most common type of heart disease, coronary artery disease (CAD).
Damage to arteries elsewhere in your body leads to atherosclerosis or narrowing of your blood vessels, which means your heart has to work harder to circulate blood. High blood pressure also increases the risk of having an aneurysm, a life-threatening issue that happens when an artery wall bursts.
High blood pressure also puts extra strain on the brain, increasing the risk that the blood vessels inside the brain will weaken and burst, leading to a hemorrhagic stroke. When hypertension leads to atherosclerosis, it can block those same vessels, leading to a different type of stroke called an ischemic stroke. These blockages can also cause “mini-strokes” or transient ischemic attacks (TIAs).
Stroke risk elevates as we get older, but it’s essential to know that, like heart disease, strokes can happen at any age, causing disability and even death.
Your kidneys play essential roles in your health and wellness. They filter wastes, toxic byproducts, and excess fluids from your blood and return “clean” blood to circulation. To perform these filtering tasks, your kidneys depend on a network of tiny blood vessels to absorb and return clean blood to your body.
Hypertension damages these tiny vessels, hindering the kidneys' ability to filter blood. Built-up wastes cause further damage, elevating the risk of developing chronic kidney disease (CKD) and kidney failure.
Your eyes depend on a network of tiny vessels to deliver oxygen—and nutrient-rich blood and maintain the health of your optic nerve. When blood pressure is high, those tiny blood vessels can burst and leak, damaging the light-sensitive retina.
Without proper management, high blood pressure eventually leads to permanent vision loss. If you have hypertension, you should have regular eye exams to monitor your eye health.
Stroke isn’t the only brain-related risk associated with hypertension. Unmanaged high blood pressure affects the rest of your brain, specifically your cognitive functions.
When your brain doesn’t receive the oxygen and nutrients it needs to maintain normal health and function, it can eventually lead to cognitive decline, memory loss, problems with simple thought processing, and dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Regular blood pressure screenings are important for monitoring your blood pressure so hypertension can be treated as soon as possible. That's true if you’ve been diagnosed with hypertension or if you have risk factors, like:
Having a family history of hypertension means you should have regular screenings, too.
To schedule your screening or to have a cardiovascular evaluation, request an appointment online or over the phone with Dr. Lewis and the team at TLC Medical Group in Port St. Lucie, Florida, today.
