High blood pressure is a chronic pathology that consists of increased blood pressure. One of the characteristics of this disease is that it does not present clear symptoms and that these do not appear for a long time.
Currently, cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality in Spain. However, hypertension is a treatable pathology. Failure to follow the doctor’s recommendations can lead to serious complications, such as myocardial infarction, hemorrhage or cerebral thrombosis, which can be avoided if properly controlled.
The first consequences of hypertension are suffered by the arteries, which harden as they endure high blood pressure continuously, they become thicker and the passage of blood through them may be difficult. This is known as arteriosclerosis.
Although the specific causes that cause high blood pressure are not yet known, it has been related to a series of factors that are usually present in the majority of people who suffer from it. It is advisable to separate those related to genetic inheritance, sex, age and race and therefore little modifiable, from those others that could be changed by varying people’s habits, environment, and customs, such as: obesity, sensitivity to sodium, excessive alcohol consumption, use of oral contraceptives and a very sedentary lifestyle.
Prevention:
Having healthy lifestyle habits and, above all, avoiding overweight and obesity are the main factors to prevent the appearance of hypertension.
Specialists point out that eating a healthy diet and practicing exercise can help the general population to be free from suffering from this pathology.
In cases in which there is a history of hypertension in the family and therefore there is a predisposition to being hypertensive over time, this genetic factor represents an additional call for attention for the patient to take care of these lifestyle habits and monitor their numbers. of blood pressure.
High blood pressure is classified as:
-Normal: less than 120/80 mmHg
-Prehypertension: 120/80 to 139/89 mmHg
-Stage 1 hypertension: 140/90 to 159/99 mmHg
-Stage 2 hypertension: 160/109 to 179/109 mmHg
-Stage 3 hypertension: greater than 179/109 mmHg
Treatments:
When treating hypertension there are two fundamental blocks of actions to carry out:
Improving lifestyle habits:
The patient has to eat a healthy diet, reduce the consumption of calories, sugars and fats and increase the practice of physical exercise. These two practices result in better weight control and if weight is well controlled it is a simple way to control hypertension.
Pharmacological treatments:
In case lifestyle changes do not work, today there are pharmacological treatments that are very useful to control blood pressure. Initially these treatments start with a single drug. However, in some cases this measure is not enough and they need to be combined with two or three medicines to control blood pressure.
Because high blood pressure is a chronic disease, it is essential that patients remain consistent with their treatments. According to Seh-Lelha data, 90 percent of patients diagnosed with hypertension do not follow the recommendations of specialists regarding hygiene or diet and 50 percent do not follow the treatments they have prescribed.
This is because as it is a pathology that has been suffered for many years, patients tend to relax with the instructions given by the doctor. This can have a number of consequences. The main one is that you will have poorly controlled hypertension, which in the long term can lead to major cardiovascular complications such as myocardial infarction, stroke, deterioration in kidney function or circulation in the legs, among others.