Diagnostics

The diagnosis is quite easy to make using a blood pressure monitor. For this purpose, a 24-hour measuring device is used, which you receive from your doctor and carry with you for one day. This serves to check whether the blood pressure is permanently elevated regardless of the situation.

Systolic values above 140mmHg require treatment. High blood pressure is divided into three degrees of severity. Systolic values of 140-159mmHg are present in grade 1, 160-179mmHg in grade 2 and more than 180mmHg in grade 3. A recent study from the USA has shown that mortality is significantly reduced when blood pressure is lowered to 120mmHg instead of below 140mmHg.

Cause of high blood pressure

There are different forms of hypertension or high blood pressure, which differ in their development. The most common is primary or essential hypertension, the genesis of which has not yet been clarified. There are factors that are partly responsible for the development of the disease, but they do not fully explain the pathomechanism.

This is true in 90% of cases, so that no concrete cause for hypertension can be found. Various factors play a role in this primary hypertension, such as overweight, increasing age, stress, diabetes or alcohol consumption. But what happens in our body to make it happen?

On the one hand, blood vessels lose elasticity over the course of our lives, become more rigid and show signs of damage and injury. As a result, the heart has to apply greater pressure to pump blood through the body against the growing resistance. On the other hand, various causes increase the volume of blood that our heart has to transport with every beat.

This causes the blood to flow faster, which leads to an increase in blood pressure.On the other hand, it is assumed that the body’s own mechanisms for raising blood pressure increasingly stimulate each other and that the kidney, which regulates blood pressure, accepts higher values than the original target value. Less common, but the better understood form of high blood pressure is secondary hypertension. Secondary means that the causative problem is in another organ and produces secondary hypertension. This can be, for example, renal artery stenosis or endocrine (hormonal) disorders such as hyperthyroidism or hormone-producing tumors that raise blood pressure. One example is pheochromocytoma, a tumor of the adrenal medulla that produces large amounts of adrenaline.