Hypertension

So why do doctors worry so much about people having raised blood pressure? The main reason is that Hypertension (persistently raised blood pressure) increases the risk of people having a heart attack or stroke. Both of these events are disasters for all involved and prevention is definitely better than treatment once they have occurred. I as a GP know that if I lower 100 people's blood pressure for a 10 year period I stand to stop 5 people having a heart attack or stroke. When these are people I have known for years and whose families I also often know, this makes me even keener to do all that I can.

What is hypertension? A really good patient information leaflet is found at http://www.patient.co.uk/health/High-Blood-Pressure-(Hypertension).htm this tells you all you need to know about what the readings your doctor gets means and gives you a lot of useful advice.

If you are found to have high blood pressure, the most important thing to do is to look carefully at your lifestyle and see if there is room for improvement. A lot of the time it comes down to a stark choice between addressing unhealthy lifestyle choices or taking increasing amounts of medication. Yes you can continue to smoke, not exercise and eat rubbish-but this will mean you will end up on a number of different pills as a consequence. As blood pressure tends to increase with age, this can mean you end up taking more and more medication. When looking at lifestyle modification, make sure you are realistic about what you can maintain in the long term. It is important to make changes which you can sustain on an ongoing basis as temporary measures will only have a temporary effect on your blood pressure.

A last quick word of warning, if you monitor your own blood pressure at home you have to add 10mmHg to the readings for them to be equivalent to those you have done at the doctors. This is commonly forgotten and can lead to suboptimal blood pressure treatment.