The Implications of High Blood Pressure

By Idai Makaya

Blood Pressure refers to the force with which the blood is pushed through the circulatory system. If you think of the blood vessels as pipes and the blood as the fluid flowing through them, if the pressure of pumping the fluid gets too high, there is a likelihood of a number of possible outcomes:

1. The pipes may burst at the weakest point – a ruptured blood vessel can cause various problems, depending on its location. In the brain burst blood vessels lead to a stroke – where blood supply is cut off from the area of the brain being nourished by the burst vessel. This leads to death of that part of the brain which could cause malfunctions of the parts of the body controlled by that section of the brain, or even result in death. The same can happen to the vessels nourishing the heart, leading to a heart attack, similar to a stroke, but affecting the heart instead of the brain. Both strokes and heart attacks are often fatal, or they cause permanent disability.
   
   
2. The pump forcing the fluid through the piping at such high pressure may begin to fail. The pump in this case is the heart and when it fails blood cannot be efficiently pumped around the body. This leads to a breathless feeling in the person concerned and can cause suffocation when large exertions are required. In extreme cases, because of the high pressure required to force the blood around the body through the vessels, circulation is cut off to the furthest parts of the body (such as fingers and toes). This leads to the gradual death of those tissues. It may also cause blood to pool in any parts of the body where more effort is required to move it about-usually the extremities, such as legs and feet. This means the legs may swell up with fluid. This can be life threatening because it causes a series of complications down the line, including blood clots. Blood clots may float around the body in the blood and block off other blood vessels, far from where they formed. This may cause strokes (by blocking blood flow to certain areas of the brain and killing them) or may cause heart attacks (much like a stroke, but in the heart’s blood supply, killing off parts of the heart).

 

How is high blood pressure caused and how does one avoid it?

There are a number of different reasons for this condition arising, and not all of them are fully understood. For the sake of practicality, let’s deal with the causes that are easiest to understand and influence:

1. Being obese means that the body gets much larger than it’s ideal size. More blood has to be formed to nourish this bigger body. The heart becomes strained by having to constantly pump this extra blood around. The heart pumps harder to get the blood around the body, straining itself and the walls of the vessels of the body, which are not designed to handle such high pressure. Strokes, heart failure or heart attacks eventually result. The easy solution to this problem, lose weight or maintain a low level of body fat.
   
   
2. High salt intake is another offender.  Think of a glass of water. If you pour a tablespoon of salt into an empty glass, a certain measure of water is required to dissolve this salt. Once you add that amount of water and stir, the salt vanishes into the solution. If you add more salt, more water is required to dissolve it. The same is true for our blood, the more salt we consume, the more blood our body must produce to dissolve it. This means the blood volume increases and more fluid is needed in the body to keep the salt concentrations in the body from reaching toxic levels. The result of the high blood volume is an increased pumping pressure from the heart through the blood vessels-much like inflating a balloon or a tyre. Thus, high blood pressure results. The simple solution to this dilemma is to reduce or minimise our salt intake.
   
   
3. High blood cholesterol is another offender. Cholesterol is a fatty substance found in the blood, obtained from fatty foods. There are 2 general types, ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ cholesterol known as ‘HDL’ and ‘LDL’ cholesterol, respectively. I wont bother you with the finer details of these definitions, but basically the ‘good’ cholesterol clears up the ‘bad’ cholesterol particles from the blood vessels. So it is good to have higher levels of ‘good’ cholesterol and lower levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol. Your doctor can advise you of which foods contain ‘good’ cholesterol and which ones contain ‘Bad’ cholesterol, if you need to improve your diet.

Think of a blood vessel as a drain pipe and bad cholesterol as dirty, oily food particles being poured into the drainpipe. The pipe will generally get clogged by the filth sticking to its walls and narrowing it. Furthermore, the filth will gather in any bends or twists in the pipe, or on any rough patches. This slows the flow of fluid through the pipe and may eventually block it.

This is the situation in the blood vessels of people with high cholesterol. Left unresolved, this leads to effects similar to those described previously. The blood has to be forced through clogged vessels at a higher pressure. Blocked vessels will lead to strokes and heart attacks due to interrupted blood flow to the brain or the heart, depending on where the blockage is. Worse still, the masses of cholesterol gumming up the vessels may be dislodged by the high blood pressure and float around the blood vessels till they reach a narrow section, which then gets clogged or blocked itself. Once again, if this happens in vessels feeding the brain or heart, tissues die and a stroke or heart attack results.

Bear this in mind and stick to low cholesterol foods. Also, regular exercise will lead to a more efficient heart and this will lower blood pressure.

If you’d like to discuss these issues in more depth, please contact Idai through this website.