What is High Blood Pressure?

With high blood pressure, this microcirculation shuts down. The tiny muscles around your arteries are constantly tight, keeping the arteries all over your body narrow. Under this constant stress, the arteries deteriorate, becoming scarred and hard, otherwise known as hardening of the arteries. The arteries easily become choked off, depriving your heart, kidneys, and brain of blood.

In the past, high blood pressure was considered an inevitable consequence of growing old. But with recent studies showing how destructive high blood pressure is and how effective medication or a change a lifestyle and diet is in correcting high blood pressure, the National Institutes of Health revamped its definition of hypertension. Instead of using misleading terms - mild, moderate, severe, and very severe - the severity of high blood pressure is not measured in stages. Even the category normal has been divided into normal and high normal. The newer terms clearly show the progressive nature of hypertension.

A few small actions today may save you from all the damage hypertension does to your arteries and organs, and may keep you from having to take anti-hypertensive drugs later in life. "All stages of hypertension are associated with increased risk of nonfatal and fatal cardiovascular disease, stroke, and kidney disease, " says NIH. "the higher the blood pressure, the greater the risk."

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