High blood pressure

What is high blood pressure?

High blood pressure (also known as hypertension) is a condition that causes the force of blood to push too high against your artery walls consistently. Over time, this can cause damage to your arteries and lead to more serious complications.

There are two different types of hypertension:

• Primary hypertension – causes of this type are typically habits and lifestyle choices.
• Secondary hypertension – causes of this type are medical conditions or medications you are taking.

Hypertension can occur at different moments and can come and go depending on the situation you are in. This includes:

• White coat hypertension – You experience elevated blood pressure in a healthcare setting, but it is normal at home
• Masked hypertension – You experience elevated blood pressure at home, but it is normal in a healthcare setting
• Sustained hypertension – you experience elevated blood pressure in healthcare settings and at home.
• Nocturnal hypertension – you experience elevated blood pressure when you sleep.

Symptoms

High blood pressure rarely presents noticeable symptoms. However, in some cases, people may experience:

• Headaches
• Blurred vision
• Nosebleeds
• Shortness of breath
• Dizziness
• Chest pain

Even if you feel fine, you should regularly check your blood pressure levels, particularly if you’re at an increased risk.

Complications

Having high blood pressure for a prolonged period of time can cause serious health issues, including:

• Heart disease
• Vascular dementia
• Eye damage
• Kidney disease and kidney failure
• Heart failure
• Stroke
• Heart attack

If you experience high blood pressure during pregnancy, it can cause complications. It is important to discuss your concerns with your doctor if you suspect you may have high blood pressure whilst pregnant.

Causes

There are many causes of high blood pressure, but habits and lifestyle choices highly influence the development of it.

These include an unhealthy diet (particularly if high in salt), lack of regular exercise, smoking, and drinking too much alcohol. You may also be at risk if you are overweight, especially if you carry more weight around your midsection.

Non-modifiable factors that can blood pressure include age, gender, ethnicity, or genetics.

Diagnosis

During your initial appointment, we will assess your symptoms and evaluate your medical and family history.

If we suspect you may have an issue, we will investigate further to determine what may be troubling you.

If we suspect you may have high blood pressure, we will measure your pressure levels using a cuff over a few recordings in order to come to a conclusive diagnosis. We may use a 24-hour blood pressure monitor if we need to investigate your condition for a longer period of time and outside of the clinic. We will use these results to find an ‘average’ blood pressure level.

Depending on the results from these tests, we may conduct further tests to determine what may be troubling you.

Treatment

Treatment will depend on the issues we may have discovered during testing and your individual needs.

Our first suggestion will be to implement key lifestyle changes to make sure you are as healthy as possible and tackle your concerns naturally first. These changes may include:

• Implementing a healthy diet and regular exercise routine
• Quitting smoking, drinking, and taking recreational drugs
• Building a healthy sleep routine
• Implementing stress management techniques such as yoga, meditation, and tai chi

Click to view our DASH diet guide for better heart health and lower blood pressure