We’ve all been there: The nurse places a blood pressure cuff around your upper arm, squeezes that little bulb that makes the cuff inflate, and voilá—you get a reading. A normal blood pressure measurement is less than 120/80 mmHg; it’s considered elevated when it’s greater than 130/81. Doctors make a big fuss about this number because high blood pressure, or hypertension, can set the stage for various forms of heart disease, including heart failure.
Blood pressure (BP) refers to the pressure of circulating blood against the walls of your blood vessels, like your veins and arteries. BP is broken down into two readings: the pressure when the ventricles pump blood out of the heart (systolic pressure) and the pressure between heartbeats when the heart is filling with blood (diastolic pressure). High blood pressure is extremely common. In fact, about half of American adults are saddled with this condition and only about 1 in 4 have it under control. As if that isn’t bad enough, more than 670,000 deaths in the United States in 2020 had hypertension as a “primary or contributing cause.” per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The good news: There are many ways to get high blood pressure back into a normal range. Here’s what you need to know about the connection between high BP and heart failure, and what you can do to keep your ticker in tip-top shape.
What causes high blood pressure?
For many people, there’s no identifiable cause of high blood pressure, which is known as primary hypertension, per the Mayo Clinic. But there are some known factors that increase a person’s risk of developing it.
Aging is a big one: “It’s very common as we get older for the [blood] vessels to get thicker,” Keith C. Ferdinand, MD, FACC, the Gerald S. Berenson Endowed Chair in preventive cardiology and a professor of medicine at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, tells SELF. When this happens, the vessels become more rigid and don’t expand as they should when blood flows through them, he explains.
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There are so many other things that can increase your chances of developing high blood pressure over time, including your diet, lack of exercise, drinking alcohol excessively, tobacco use, stress or anxiety, and various chronic conditions—including pregnancy, diabetes, and sleep apnea, among others. When high blood pressure is caused by an underlying condition or medication, it’s known as secondary hypertension.
Hypertension also tends to run in families, and disproportionately impacts Black people, who also face a higher risk of heart failure due to various systemic barriers.
What’s the connection between high blood pressure and heart failure?
Heart failure develops when the heart is unable to pump enough blood to supply the body with what it needs. Over time, high blood pressure can cause damage to the arteries and muscle that affect the heart’s pumping powers, potentially leading to failure.
With chronic high blood pressure, the cells inside the arteries, which carry vital oxygenated blood away from the heart, become damaged. This makes it difficult for the proper amount of blood to circulate, which can lead to chest pain, irregular heart rhythms (arrhythmias), heart attack, and heart failure, per the CDC.
Source: SELF
