What Is Hypertension?

Hypertension is another word for high blood pressure. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, hypertension is "abnormally high blood pressure and especially arterial blood pressure."

High blood pressure occurs when the arteriole arteries narrow, making it difficult for blood to pass through them. This forces the heart to pump harder to get the blood through. As the pressure increases above normal and is sustained, the result is high blood pressure.

High blood pressure is a common problem. It is the most common chronic illness in the United States. Almost twenty five percent of Americans have it, and a significant number of them do not realize they have it. That is because high blood pressure causes few, if any symptoms, until it has reached an advanced stage. This makes it important to have your blood pressure checked regularly.

High blood pressure is a very dangerous disease to have and leave untreated. High blood pressure significantly increases a person's risk for stroke, heart failure, heart attack, kidney disease, vision impairment, dementia, and premature death. Left untreated, high blood pressure can shorten a person's life by up to twenty years. Despite these alarming facts, a little over fifteen percent of the people in the United States who have high blood pressure and know they have it do nothing to control it.

There is no cure for high blood pressure but it is very treatable (http://www.gothypertension.com/treatment) and is also preventable. Lifestyle changes, along with medication if needed, can keep blood pressure at a safe level.

There have been substantial advances in knowledge about and treatment of high blood pressure in the past several decades. Increased awareness and medical advancements in regards to high blood pressure have helped decrease the number of deaths from strokes by seventy percent and the number of deaths from heart disease by more than fifty percent according to data from the Mayo Clinic.

The risk of developing high blood pressure increases as a person ages. Race is also a determining risk factor. Black Americans have the highest risk of developing high blood pressure--about thirty-three percent of black Americans have it. Approximately twenty-three percent of white Americans have high blood pressure, making them the next highest risk group. Twenty-one percent of American Indians have high blood pressure. Eighteen percent of the American Hispanic population has high blood pressure and sixteen percent of Americans of either Asian or Pacific Islander descent have high blood pressure according to information from the Mayo Clinic.

Family history is a risk factor as well. If high blood pressure runs in a person's family they have a higher risk of developing it. Gender is another factor. Up to age fifty-five, men are more likely to develop high blood pressure. After the age of fifty-five, women have a higher risk of developing high blood pressure.

Other factors that increase a person's chance of developing high blood pressure include: being overweight, having a sedentary lifestyle, smoking or chewing tobacco, excessive alcohol consumption, and low potassium levels.

Some illnesses raise a person's risk of developing high blood pressure. If a person has heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol or sleep apnea they have a greater risk of developing high blood pressure.

There are two different forms of high blood pressure, essential high blood pressure and secondary high blood pressure. Essential high blood pressure is the most common form of high blood pressure. It is also known as primary high blood pressure. It does not have any obvious causes.

Secondary high blood pressure is when the cause of the high blood pressure can be attributed to another disease. Only five to ten percent of high blood pressure cases are secondary. Some of the diseases and disorders that cause secondary high blood pressure are kidney disease, renal artery obstruction, hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, hormonal abnormalities, and preeclampsia.

It is common for people with untreated high blood pressure to have plaque accumulate in the major arteries of the heart. The plaque deposits reduce blood flow to the heart and can eventually cause a heart attack. High blood pressure narrows the arteries and blood vessels in the body. Getting oxygen rich blood to the heart becomes more difficult as the arteries get narrower. If the heart cannot get enough oxygen, it will cause a heart attack.

D Ruplinger is a featured writer for http://www.gothypertension.com. Visit the web site for more information about high blood pressure and hypertension treatment.

Overweight And Hypertension

The number of overweight and obese people in US is growing. In 2000 65% of adults were overweight and 31% were obese. Each year an average US citizen is gaining 2 pounds of additional body weight. The conequence of this is the elevation of blood pressure and the growth of number of hypertensive people. One third of Americans already have blood pressure above 140/90 mmHg or receive antihypertensive treatment.

The weight loss leads to the decrease in blood pressure in many obese patients. However, most overweight hypertensive individuals can not reduce their body weight and maintain it in long run, despite strong motivation and extraordinary efforts.

Obviously, neither weight loss methods nor antihypertensive treatment do not address the cause of both condition. There is the growing evidence now that the underlying cause of both hypertension and weight gain is the chronic over-activation of sympathetic nervous system (SNS).

SNS is normally activated during stressful situations. Repeated or prolonged stresses bring to chronic extensive activity of SNS, deregulation of body functions and the development of various diseases.

Which disease will develop depends on individual genetics and environment. For the majority of people this weight gain and hypertension.

The main suspected mechanism here is the insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is the decreased ability of insulin to promote glucose utilization by the cells. Insulin here is not damaged nor its concentration declines. But the cells affected by SNS over activity refuse to intake and utilize glucose as a source of energy.

Of course, overeating and low physical activity aggravate the process because the cell will sooner refuse to utilize glucose if it is in surplus in blood and energy expenditure is decreased.

Insulin resistance results in increased blood concentration of both insulin and glucose. That leads to the deviations in lipid and carbohydrate metabolism and eventually to the fat accumulation and blood pressure elevation.

The accumulated fat in its turn becomes an important endocrine organ, promoting further development of obesity by stimulating SNS and secreting steroid hormones.

There are two types of fat and two types of obesity. The fat can be subcutaneous and visceral and the obesity can be central and low.

Visceral or intra-abdominal is located inside the abdominal cavity. It stimulates SNS much more than subcutaneous fat and its accumulation is strongly associated with hypertension.

Central or abdominal type of obesity is the accumulation of fat mainly around the waist. The low or hip type of obesity is the accumulation of fat mainly around the hips. The ratio between waist and hip diameters allows distinguishing two types of obesity. Waist/hip ratio, when checked against cardiovascular mortality, shows that abdominal (central) obesity is more dangerous than hip obesity.

Conclusion:

Hypertension and weight gain are both the result of chronic over activity of Sympathetic Nervous System. This explains why many people can not reduce and maintain normal body weight in spite of strong motivation and thorough application of standard weight loss methods, not affecting sympathetic activity.

 Alexander Alfimov, To learn more about the role of sympathetic nervous system and the new approach to health and fitness see http://www.slowbreath.com.

Primary Pulmonary Hypertension

Primary pulmonary hypertension research and information including symptoms and treatments. This article provides a summary of the condition and mentions the problem drug Fen-phen.

Primary pulmonary hypertension research and information including symptoms and treatments. This article provides a summary of the condition and mentions the problem drug Fen-phen.

What is primary pulmonary hypertension? The best place to start is the pulmonary arteries. These arteries move the blood from the right ventricle of the heart to the lungs for oxygen.. When people have high blood pressure specifically in the pulmonary arteries, they have pulmonary hypertension.

This could be an extremely rare side-effect of Pondimin and Redux. The connection, however, has not been proven and more studies are needed to discover if this is in fact the case.

Primary pulmonary hypertension can lead to a failure of the right side of the heart as well as an inhibited ability to exercise.

Symptons include some basic signs such as shortness of breath, fainting or syncope, fatigue, and angina pectoris. If arterial pressure becomes higher than 25 mmHg, pulmonary hypertension almost certainly exists. Normal pressure of someone living at sea level is only 12-16 mmHg. A Swan-Ganz catheter can measure this accurately.

Primary pulmonary hypertension occurs without an obvious cause. Secondary pulmonary hypertension comes because of another disease. If the case is pph, it is considered to be a genetic disorder. It can be associated with appetite suppressants like Fen-phen. There was even a lawsuit about Fen-phen (Abenhaim et al, 1996). There could be a genetic weakness to problem drugs, the basic cause of the disease is not known. You can find more about this at my site at pulmonary-research.comPPH can often be fatal and people who have it usually do not show symptoms until they are in their late twenties or early thirties. Fortunately, it's still a rare problem, however women are almost twice as susceptible to it as men.

Treatment can vary depending on the cause of primary pulmonary hypertension. Oxygen therapy can be useful if patients have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. An inferior vena caval filter insertion or a pulmonary endarterectonmy can be done if the PPH is caused by chronic thromboembolism.

Lifestyle changes are key to lessening the effects of PPH. Digoxin, diuretics, oral anticoagulands and vasodilators are also beneficial. Sildenafil can also be used to treat primary pulmonary hypertension.

Jake maintains both health research as well as pulmonary research websites.

Could Hypertension Simply Be "

Rita Lambros-Segur, M.H.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Well, that's what many renowned natural health practitioners refer high blood pressure to.

What causes hypertension or high blood pressure? Some people think it's being overweight, stress, salt and a host of other factors.

Here's another idea. Your blood becomes dirty. Normally, the dirt is filtered out by the liver. But eventually your liver gets dirty too. So your blood can't flow easily through the liver, and it gets blocked. Often medical doctors put patients on blood thinners to thin it out to work it through the liver.

But the problem is, that filter still has to filter. And if it's dirty, it can't do the job. So the course of wisdom would be to detox and strengthen the liver.

Conventional allopathic medicine assures us that there is no cure for hypertension--only control which must be continued for life. Often this control consists of daily medication which is in the form of strong chemical diuretics. These chemicals leach potassium out of the body at an astounding rate. The leached potassium is then replaced by the administration of inorganic caustic chemical potassium which does more harm than good. The kidneys can become overworked by the processing of these drugs.

Why not go to the cause of hypertension instead of merely treating symptoms? Naturally, we have been provided with herbs and foods that will totally provide for the proper chemical balance of potassium and sodium in the body, as well as stimulate sluggish livers.

In nature, the ratio of sodium to potassium is about 1 to 5. Man has altered this state by the ingestion of massive amounts of salt in the diet. We are able to assimilate about 20 grains (the small salt particles) a day into our human system. The average American man ingests about one teaspoon of salt a day. This comes in processed foods, such as cheese, processed meats, breads, snacks, etc., as well as additional salt from the old salt shaker.

Excess sodium can force its way into the spaces between the tissues constricting capillaries that are so small only one red blood cell may pass through them at a time. This phenomena shuts down blood and nutrient (including oxygen) supplies to various areas of the body. Unchelated sodium also has the ability to hold water in the tissues causing edema. Salt is also very hard on the small tubules in the kidneys and has an affinity for cholesterol--another substance which plugs up arterial plumbing.

Dr. John Christopher, N.D. would often recommend foods high in potassium to help in blood pressure regulation. Grape juice, potatoes, tomatoes, citrus fruits and green vegetables are only a few of such foods.

In other words, by combining lifestyle modifications with whole-food supplements designed to bring the body into homeostasis, you'll have a winning combination to balance the body's electrical construction.

Many monitor their hypertension with a sphygmomanometer and a stethescope. Today, that market produces easier monitoring devices. In any case, once you are in harmony with nature's cures and the electrical construct of both the universe and your body, you will not need external instruments to measure your health, which I'm sure you'll agree is a gift.

Editor of the semi-monthly e-zine named, "Your Electrical Body", Rita has studied with master herbalists and naturopaths alike. Endeavoring to follow the precepts of Dr. John Christopher, she has aided numerous folks to enhance their health. Check out her FREE E-zine, FREE Catalog and gift along with an informative ebook offer. http://www.electricalbody.com/ebook.htm

The Natural Alternative to the Most Prescribed Hypertension Meds

Wouldn???t it be great if you could get all of the benefits of a high blood pressure medication without the damaging side effects? Well you can if you just know what foods to eat and how to supplement them with a few good choices. When it comes to managing blood pressure it often is the combination of the food and lifestyle choices you make each day that can be the difference between life long dependency on medication or a life of good nutrition and health.

The intent of blood pressure medication prescribed by your doctor is to quickly and continuously lower blood pressure readings for both the systolic and diastolic readings ??? the top and bottom numbers. Sometimes the problem lies with just one of those readings ??? either as the heart beats or the pressure between beats as the heart rests.

Blood pressure medication causes one of three main reactions. They either increase the size of the blood vessel (vasodilator); flush out the blood vessel of salt and water and create freer blood flow with less volume (diuretic); or slow down the heart beat (beta blockers).


Top 3 High Blood Pressure Medications

1. Doxazosin (brand name Wytensin) is a vasodilator that relaxes blood vessel walls. Its negative side effects include rapid heartbeat and fluid retention, so often other medications must be prescribed to counter act these side effects, which can raise blood pressure. Also, this medication is associated with some gastrointestinal problems and impotence.

2. Hydrochlorothiazide (under brand names Carozine, HydroDiuril or Diaqua) is a potassium reserving diuretic. It is intended to hang on to the potassium, an important mineral in lowering blood pressure that can get dangerously low with diuretic usage. The resulting side effects however are dizziness, muscle weakness and especially cramping.

3. Acebutolo (brand name Sectral) is a beta blocker intended to decrease the heart rate and blood flow. The side effects are a lowering of the good cholesterol (HDL) and a rapid heart rate can occur if the medication is suddenly stopped.


Get the Same Results without Drugs

To get the same benefits of the most commonly prescribed medications without the negative side effects there are natural alternatives. Diet is the number one way to increase the desirable reactions, but exercise contributes greatly too.

For example, the same reaction caused by vasodilators can take place when you get enough L-Arginine. This amino acid lets the walls of the blood vessels relax. You can take a supplement or get it through animal proteins, peanuts or soy.

By drinking plenty of water, at least 8 glasses each day, you can accomplish the same diuretic effects of the prescription. You will flush out excess salt and other toxins that can increase blood pressure. You can keep your potassium levels in a good range by eating fresh bananas and potatoes.

Finally, to get the same benefits of a slower heart rate and freer flowing blood without lowering your good cholesterol you can keep your heart strong with Hawthorne and through routine cardiovascular exercise that will allow the heart to work more efficiently.

Frank Mangano. Frank is an author, researcher and dedicates his life to finding solutions for people interested in reducing their risk of health problems by improving their overall quality of life naturally, without the use prescription medication. Learn more by visiting his website: http://www.TheSilentKillerExposed.com

Garlic Compound Allicin Prevents Chronic Pulmonary Hypertension

A study suggested that eating two cloves of raw garlic a day could protect against a severe form of pulmonary hypertension.

The study was performed on rats. A small dose of monocrotalline was used on rats to induce vasoconstriction of the pulmonary arteries. Within three weeks, the control group of rats developed chronic pulmonary hypertension with pulmonary arterial pressure markedly increased while the group pf rats that received small doses of allicin, an active metabolite from garlic, in their diet did not develop the disease.

The study also found that it was allicin that plays the role in the prevention of the severe pulmonary hypertension. Garlic if heated or with allicin stripped does not have the protective effect.

The researchers demonstrated that this protective effect was achieved through vasorelaxation or reduction in tension of the blood vessel walls.

Garlic has been known for long to be medicinally beneficial to the human health. It may help lower blood pressure, decrease ischemic injury, reduce blood cholesterol, inhibit platelet functions and increase thrombolysis or destruction of a thrombus.

Allicin was proved in a separate study by the same group "to protect coronary vascular function and lessen the severity of right heart hypertrophy, two of the serious byproducts of chronic pulmonary hypertension", according to the news released by Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

Although the study was conducted on rats, it's expected that garlic has the same effect on humans. The effective amount used on rats is equivalent to about two cloves of garlic a day for humans.

The study was conducted by Dr. David D. Ku and colleagues from University of Alabama at Birmingham. Results of the study were presented on April 2 at the Experimental Biology 2005 meeting in San Diego.

Dr. John Roberts is a freelance writer for http://foodconsumer.org. Contact him at foodconsumer@spamarrest.com if you have any questions.