We’re constantly inundated with warnings about the dangers of having high blood pressure, which affects nearly 120 million Americans, but what exactly about this condition is concerning?
To answer this question, we turn to the skilled medical team at Bethel Family Medicine, including Dr. Douglas R. Grogan and Dr. Jennifer Hall DiFalco, who specialize in cardiovascular conditions such as high blood pressure, also referred to as hypertension.
Our view is that education is paramount when it comes to the health of our patients, which is why we want to take this opportunity to explain in greater detail why high blood pressure is bad.
Let’s start with what we mean by blood pressure. When we measure your blood pressure, we’re measuring two things:
The resulting numbers are your systolic pressure over your diastolic pressure, which is why there are two numbers in blood pressure readings.
Any reading that’s 130/80 and higher is considered high blood pressure.
When you have high blood pressure, it means that your blood is placing more pressure on the walls of your arteries with every heartbeat, and this increase in pressure can cause damage over time.
The added and prolonged pressure can cause your arteries to stiffen, and less flexible blood vessels aren’t as effective at circulating blood.
Additionally, the higher pressure can damage and shred the walls of your blood vessels, which causes them to trap more fatty plaques. As a result, these plaques can build up, potentially causing atherosclerosis, which is a blockage in your blood vessels that prevents your blood from flowing as freely as it should.
Now let’s get into the scary part of this conversation — the potential side effects of high blood pressure, which include:
Serious health issues are on this list, including the leading cause of death in the United States — heart disease.
Now that we’ve painted a more detailed picture, we want to offer some good news about high blood pressure — it is reversible.
You can take many steps to lower your blood pressure, and we’re here to help find the ones that will work best for you. From medications to dietary changes, we can get your blood pressure out of the danger zone.
To get on the road to better cardiovascular health through lower blood pressure, we invite you to schedule an appointment at our office in Brockton, Massachusetts, today.
