High Blood Pressure: Causes and Effects _ Natalia Carolina Camargos Ferreira

Summary

            According to the article “Blood Pressure Rising around the Globe” (1), almost 1 billion of people around the world have high blood and over 500 million will suffer with this by 2025. The big problem is that the high blood pressure can cause other health problems and many times people don’t know how much serious is this. So this article has the purpose to inform the causes and the effects of this disease that have been among the main causes of deaths according to the World Health Organization (2).

            The high pressure -or hypertension- is a condition in which there is an unusual big pressure done by the blood against the artery walls(3). This pressure elevation can be caused by two major factors: the heart pumps blood with excessive force and the arterioles are narrower than usual causing more pressure against the vessel’s walls. One person can have the high pressure for years without feel symptoms, but even without them, the blood vessels are being damaged. Moreover, high pressure can have other effect in other vital organs such as brain and kidneys. That’s the reason why the high pressure is often known as “silent killer”.

            The main symptoms of the high pressure are: drowsiness, confusion, headache, nausea, loss of vision and respiratory distress (difficulty breathing). In addition, as already mentioned, the high pressure can also have complications damaging other organs , as shown in the picture bellow. For example, the high blood pressure can cause heart diseases like: Coronary Artery Disease (thickening of the blood vessel walls), Heart Failure (caused by the workload), and Cardiac Arrhythmias(irregular heartbeats). Additionally, the high blood pressure can cause stroke such as silent cerebral infarcts. Diabetes and kidney diseases can also be derived from the increase of the blood pressure. Moreover can be other complication from the high blood pressure: dementia (loss memory), eye damage and sexual dysfunction.    

       

Comments     

              The high pressure blood has been a big problem in the world because each year the number of people in this condition has been increasing so much. The increase of the blood pressure can cause serious problems for important organs and damage the body’s health. It’s important that people be aware about the causes and effect of the hypertension because sometimes the person doesn't feel the effect in a short time but years later when the body is too damaged.

References

(1) http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18660422/ns/health-heart_health/t/blood-pressure-rising-around-globe/#.U-EUXPldW0I

(2) http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/

(3) http://umm.edu/health/medical/reports/articles/high-blood-pressure