The ManicaPost
Dr Tendai Zuze
Health Matters
HIGH blood pressure (hypertension) can quietly damage your body for years before symptoms develop, which is why it is often referred to as the silent killer.
Left uncontrolled, you may end up with a disability, poor quality of life or even a fatal heart attack.
Fortunately, with treatment and lifestyle changes, you can control your high blood pressure to reduce your risk of life-threatening complications.
Below are some of the problems you can get from high blood pressure.
Healthy arteries are flexible, strong and elastic.
Their inner lining is smooth so that blood flows freely, supplying vital organs and tissues with adequate nutrients and oxygen.
If you have high blood pressure, the increased pressure of blood flowing through your arteries gradually can cause a variety of problems, including:
◆ Artery damage and narrowing. High blood pressure can damage the cells of your arteries’ inner lining.
These changes can affect arteries throughout your body, blocking blood flow to your heart, kidneys, brain, arms and legs.
The damage can cause many problems, including chest pain (angina), heart attack, heart failure, kidney failure, stroke, blocked arteries in your legs or arms (peripheral arterial disease), eye damage, and aneurysms.
◆ Aneurysm. Over time, the constant pressure of blood moving through a weakened artery can cause a section of its wall to enlarge and form a bulge (aneurysm).
An aneurysm can potentially rupture and cause life-threatening internal bleeding.
Your heart pumps blood to your entire body.
Uncontrolled high blood pressure can damage your heart in a number of ways, such as:
◆ Coronary artery disease. Coronary artery disease affects the arteries that supply blood to your heart muscle.
Arteries narrowed by coronary artery disease don’t allow blood to flow freely through your arteries.
When blood can’t flow freely to your heart, you can experience chest pain, a heart attack or irregular heart rhythms (arrhythmias).
◆ Enlarged left heart. High blood pressure forces your heart to work harder than necessary in order to pump blood to the rest of your body.
This causes the left ventricle to thicken or stiffen.
This condition increases your risk of heart attack, heart failure and sudden cardiac death.
◆ Heart failure.
Over time, the strain on your heart caused by high blood pressure can cause your heart muscle to weaken and work less efficiently.
Eventually, your overwhelmed heart simply begins to wear out and fail.
Just like your heart, your brain depends on a nourishing blood supply to work properly and survive.
But high blood pressure can cause several problems, including:
◆ Transient ischemic attack (TIA).
Sometimes called a ministroke, this is a brief, temporary disruption of blood supply to your brain which is often a warning that you are at risk of a full blown stroke.
◆ Stroke. A stroke occurs when part of your brain is deprived of oxygen and nutrients, causing brain cells to die.
Uncontrolled high blood pressure can lead to stroke by damaging and weakening your brain’s blood vessels, causing them to narrow, rupture or leak.
High blood pressure can also cause blood clots to form in the arteries leading to your brain, blocking blood flow and potentially causing a stroke.
Your kidneys filter excess fluid and waste from your blood — a process that depends on healthy blood vessels.
High blood pressure can injure both the blood vessels in and leading to your kidneys, causing several types of kidney disease (nephropathy).
Having diabetes in addition to high blood pressure can worsen the damage.
◆ Kidney failure. High blood pressure is one of the most common causes of kidney failure.
That’s because it can damage both the large arteries leading to your kidneys and the tiny blood vessels within the kidneys.
Tiny, delicate blood vessels supply blood to your eyes.
Like other vessels, they, too, can be damaged by high blood pressure:
◆ Eye blood vessel damage (retinopathy).
High blood pressure can damage the vessels supplying blood to your retina, causing retinopathy.
This condition can lead to bleeding in the eye, blurred vision and complete loss of vision.
◆ Nerve damage (optic neuropathy). This is a condition in which blocked blood flow damages the optic nerve.
It can kill nerve cells in your eyes, which may cause bleeding within your eye or vision loss.
Although the inability to have and maintain an erection (erectile dysfunction) becomes increasingly common in men as they reach age 50, it’s even more likely to occur if they have high blood pressure, too.
Over time, high blood pressure damages the lining of your blood vessels and causes your arteries to harden and narrow (atherosclerosis), limiting blood flow.
This means less blood is able to flow to your penis.
For some men, the decreased blood flow makes it difficult to achieve and maintain erections — often referred to as erectile dysfunction.
The problem is fairly common, especially among men who are not treating their high blood pressure.
Women may have sexual dysfunction as a side effect of high blood pressure as well.
High blood pressure can reduce blood flow to your vagina.
For some women, this leads to a decrease in sexual desire or arousal, vaginal dryness, or difficulty achieving orgasm.
If you are worried about high blood pressure and its complications, please visit your doctor.
