Hypertension

Here are Reasons, Effects, Precautions of Hypertension.

I am Dr. Rajiva Gupta, senior consultant in internal medicine and diabetes. I have my practice at Upchar Valley in Ashok Vihar. Today we will talk about hypertension or high blood pressure.

Hypertension is a growing problem in the entire world and especially in the developing countries like India. Last surveys have found that hypertension is prevalent in almost 30% of adult population of India. Why is hypertension or high blood pressure increasing? The reasons are multi-factorial essentially because of bad lifestyle which includes obesity, diets like processed foods or restaurant food which is very high in salt, increase in mental stress and lack of physical activity. In addition to that, as the population ages, so does the prevalence of hypertension increases.

Why is hypertension so important to control? The reason is that researches found that hypertension is one of the most important modifiable factors for heart disease and strokes. Therefore, if a patient has got hypertension and if the blood pressure is controlled adequately, then the chances of developing a stroke or heart attack or heart failure or kidney failure or blindness get reduced markedly. However once the patient does not control the blood pressure and these complications occur, then it becomes a lifelong medical problem and adds to the quality of life- survival as well as the financial burden on the patient and his family. So blood pressure needs to be controlled meticulously.

Now, how to go about it? We, as physicians, always measure blood pressure of every patient who comes to our clinic irrespective of his symptoms and we are able to identify which are the patients who are likely to develop hypertension. If a patient comes to the clinic and his blood pressure is somewhere around 130 to 135, then we ask the patient to get a recheck done to see if the pressure is persistently elevated. At this point, I would like to mention that overall the agreed definition of hypertension is persistent blood pressure more than 140 upper blood pressure which is called the systolic blood pressure and more than 90 which is the diastolic blood pressure.

Secondly, if we find that the patient is having blood pressure more than this level then we give him counseling about lifestyle modification like control of diet, exercise, to get his other parameters checked like cholesterol levels, blood sugar levels and we discuss with the patient about the importance of blood pressure and treatment for blood pressure medication. Once we control blood pressure, we find that the patient’s quality of life improves and the prevalence of complications is also reduced markedly. Blood pressure control has been found to be one of the most cost effective modalities of treatment. Cost effectiveness means the cost of treatment of blood pressure is than when the complications occur.

As I had mentioned earlier, that once the complications because of hypertension occur then it leads markedly to financial burden on the patient’s family. Therefore, blood pressure is important to recognize. Ideally what is to be done is to prevent the occurrence of blood pressure by adopting a healthy lifestyle. If blood pressure has already occurred, then we should consult the doctor to treat it adequately in addition to modification of lifestyle which has already been addressed to. In this way, it will go a long way in reducing the burden of hypertension on the entire society.

In case, any of our viewers or listeners are interested in seeking any query on hypertension or seeking treatment of blood pressure, you can log on to the lybrate.com homepage and look for Dr. Rajiva Gupta.