What to do if the diastole is too high?
You can do quite a lot yourself, starting with taking the medication prescribed by your doctor. Theoretically, high blood pressure is well treatable, but requires the patient to participate. Unfortunately, it is alarmingly often the case that medication is not taken or not taken regularly.
In addition, weight loss is recommended because blood pressure drops 2 mmHg per kg. Physical activity is also an excellent way to lower blood pressure permanently and also facilitates weight loss. Here one kills two birds with one stone.During sport, diastolic blood pressure in particular decreases because the vessels in the working muscles dilate, resulting in a decrease in peripheral resistance, which, as mentioned above, plays an important role in the development of high blood pressure.
In addition to weight reduction, it is of course also sensible to eliminate other risk factors. These include smoking, alcohol consumption (more than 1⁄4 liters of wine per day or < 30g per day) and stress, be it professional or private. If one makes the diagnosis oneself or has the suspicion that a hypertension is present, one should visit a physician in any case and let the suspicion further clarify as well as agree upon a therapy.
Causes of increased diastole
The diastolic blood pressure rises continuously until the age of 60, as does the systolic. The systolic rises further with increasing age, the diastolic falls again. As a result, the blood pressure amplitude, i.e. the pulse pressure, increases.
This means that the difference between the systolic and diastolic values becomes greater. For this reason, diastolic hypertension is very rare at an older age, but occurs mainly in the 4th and 5th decade of life. Primary hypertension often begins at this age and its genesis (origin) has not yet been fully clarified.
This usually begins with diastolic hypertension, but as the disease progresses, systolic hypertension also develops, so that both values are elevated and need treatment. The cause is usually an increase in peripheral resistance. This resistance is caused by the vessels, which can be simply imagined as tubes.
When fluid flows through these “tubes”, friction and thus resistance is created. The smaller the radius of the vessel, the higher the resistance. Furthermore it can be deduced that a higher pressure must be generated to overcome the high resistance.
This means that the smaller the radius, the higher the pressure. If someone is now suffering from a diastolic blood pressure that is too high, a vasoconstriction can be concluded. This is the case, for example, in a state of shock or when there is a lack of fluid/volume.
But there are also a number of other causes of vasoconstriction, e.g. the autonomic nervous system, which causes the muscles of the vessels to contract, or a disturbance in the hormone secretion in the kidney. In the course of time, high pressure, especially in the large arteries, leads to calcification of the vessels, which in turn reduces the radius of the vessel – a vicious circle. In severe diastolic hypertension, a secondary form of hypertension must be considered.
In this case, the cause lies primarily in another organ from whose damage the high blood pressure is derived. The underlying disease can be an endocrine disorder, i.e. it can affect the hormone balance, e.g.
hyperthyroidism or hormone-producing tumors (e.g. pheochromocytoma). Psychiatric diseases can also play a role, as can certain vascular diseases, e.g. renal artery stenosis. In addition to their detoxification function, the kidneys have another essential function – the regulation of blood pressure.
The level of blood pressure is closely related to the total amount of blood circulating in our body’s circulation. The kidney has a special influence on this, as it is the decisive organ for regulating the amount of fluid. Tightly regulated mechanisms inside and outside the kidney cause the renal vessels to narrow or dilate, allowing a larger or smaller portion of the blood to be filtered.
Accordingly, the amount of blood in the circulation is increased or decreased, thus exerting a decisive influence on blood pressure values. If, for example, renal artery stenosis occurs, i.e. an occlusion of one of the renal arteries, this can result in the filtration of the kidneys being severely restricted and consequently more blood volume remaining in the circulatory system. As a result, the blood pressure rises.
