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Hypertension: Causes, Solutions & Understanding the Different Stages
Last tip I talked about how to measure your blood pressure correctly. This tip helps you to interpret high blood pressure. Once you have read this, you will understand why measuring blood pressure the correct way is so essential.
In this tip, I will dive deeper in:
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The different stages of hypertension.
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The signs & symptoms of hypertension.
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Why having normal values is important for health & longevity.
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What the difference is between primary & secondary hypertension.
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What are the most important causes of hypertension and what can you do about it?
Since hypertension is such a big topic, I wanted to talk about low blood pressure another time. Let’s dive into this!
The Different Stages of Hypertension
The difficulty with hypertension or high blood pressure is that one expert might consider one value high, while the other expert considers other values as high. Currently, scientific literature considers a healthy value when the systolic pressure is under 120 and the diastolic pressure is less than 80.
Just to help you remember, the systolic pressure is measured when the left ventricle in the heart contracts and pushes blood into the aorta. This causes pressure to rise in the blood vessels. A blood pressure monitor will measure this number.
When the left ventricle relaxes, the valves in the heart close preventing blood from the aorta to go back into the heart and the blood flows from the atrium into the left ventricle. The pressure in the blood vessels will drop. The pressure measured then is called diastolic pressure.
You just need one value to be elevated to talk about elevated blood pressure. Below you can quickly see where your number falls when you get your blood pressure results back:
Table of the Different Stages of Hypertension:
Systolic Diasystolic
Healthy range: less than 120 less than 80
Elevated: between 120-129 less than 80
Stage 1 Hypertension: between 130-139 between 80-90
Stage 2 Hypertension: 140 or higher 90 or higher
Hypertension Crisis: Over 180 over 120
If you measured your blood pressure correctly and at least one of the numbers falls into the Hypertension Crisis category, it is important to make an appointment with your doctor.
What are the signs & symptoms of elevated blood pressure?
Often nothing!
Most of the signs often look innocent as well. You might experience:
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Headaches
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Nose bleeds
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Shortness of breath
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Dizziness
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Blood spot in the eyes
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Chest pain
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Vision changes like blurred vision
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Buzzing in the ears
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Heart palpitations.
Hypertension & Longevity
The smallest blood vessels suffer the most from elevations in blood vessels. Kidneys, eyes and brains contain a good amount of small blood vessels and this is where hypertension can cause damage. Stage 1 and Stage 2 hypertension can be invisible for years and doesn’t cause immediate problems. But walking around day in and day out with these values can slowly cause these organs to struggle. Hypertension can all play a role in Dementia, heart disease, kidney disease and vision loss.
Interestingly enough, studies show with relatively small elevations in blood pressure, the risk of death is significantly increased. This metastudy concluded that:
If you consider people ages about 40 to 70, every 20 millimetres of mercury increase in systolic blood pressure and every 10 millimetres of mercury increase in diastolic blood pressure are associated with a doubling in the risk of death from stroke, heart disease or other vascular diseases
If your blood pressure is 140 over 90 as opposed to 120 over 80, you’ve doubled your risk of death.
Unfortunately, a lot of doctors don’t consider blood pressure readings of 139/89 as a problem without symptoms. When optimal health is your goal, lowering these numbers will reduce vascular stress on your body and is an investment in your future.
Primary Hypertension vs Secondary Hypertension
Sometimes you will hear people talk about primary hypertension and secondary hypertension. Officially primary hypertension is hypertension that isn’t caused by underlying health conditions. Secondary hypertension is when underlying health conditions cause your blood pressure to rise.
However, keep in mind you can have both primary and secondary hypertension!
Since in functional medicine, we look at lab values differently, the lines between primary hypertension and secondary hypertension can get a bit blurry. The distinction is also less important. There are however clues as to when secondary hypertension might be at play.
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Clue 1: If a person’s already being treated for high blood pressure but is not responding to medications.
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Clue 2: Also, if someone is no longer responding to medications that they previously responded to.
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Clue 3: If blood pressure is extremely high (above 180 mm Hg systolically)
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Clue 4: If it’s high and you’re really young. For example, a 30 year old person that otherwise has no risk factors such as a family history of high blood pressure, they’re not obese, and yet they show up with high blood pressure.
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Clue 5: If the blood pressure rises really suddenly.
What can you do to lower your blood pressure?
Find the root causes!
Here is a list that can help you on your way:
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Address Insulin resistance: insulin has been shown to inhibit sodium excretion by increasing sodium reabsorption in the kidney. Sodium accumulation causes water retention and often, high blood pressure.
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Salt/Sodium intake: You might have learned that reducing salt reduces blood pressure. There is more nuance to that. The influence on blood pressure by consuming less salt for a lot of people isn’t that big. Some people do however respond well to reducing salt intake. The best way is to find out empirically! Just measure the change in your blood pressure.
People that do respond better to lower sodium intake are for example people with insulin resistance. Other people that might respond better to lower sodium intake are older people, people with kidney disease and African Americans.
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Address Thyroid problems: A slow or a fast thyroid can cause high blood pressure. Would you like to know what symptoms are of thyroid dysfunction? Just watch this video. If you like to learn more about what lab values you should measure to provide the correct insight into your thyroid health, watch this video!
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Obesity: being overweight can increase blood pressure.
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Stress: Another big reason why blood pressure elevates is because of imbalances in stress hormones. With elevated stress, the body tries to prepare for a possible physical attack. It tries to increase blood sugar, heart rate and blood pressure to make a quick escape possible.
Unfortunately, the body doesn’t differentiate between different types of stress. Up until a few hundred years ago hunting or being in physical danger caused stress hormones and blood pressure to rise. These days deadlines, trying to pay bills and emotional stress cause the same stress response and can cause elevations in blood pressure.
To make it more complex: stress hormones can also rise with infections, inflammation and pain. This video dives deeper into what can cause elevations in cortisol and is worth watching!
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Insufficient potassium: insufficient potassium intake can also cause elevations in blood pressure. In fact, more people will respond to increasing potassium intake as reducing potassium. Good sources of potassium are tomatoes, bananas, avocados and beans.
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Insufficient magnesium: Magnesium is needed to absorb potassium into the cells, but it is also needed to relax muscles around the blood vessels. If you like to measure your magnesium levels, I prefer RBC(Red Blood Cell) magnesium above serum levels.
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Poor sleep: Insufficient sleep can impact blood pressure as well. In fact, a really bad night’s sleep can increase blood pressure already the next day. Especially people who sleep fewer the 5 hours per night can see significant elevations in blood pressure.
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Lack of exercise: exercise can be a great way of reducing blood pressure. Cardiovascular activities (and this can include walking if you are physically inactive!) seem to have the biggest impact. Strength training can be great as well. A tip when your blood pressure is really elevated, don’t start with exercises like squats, leg presses and deadlifts since these exercises do increase blood pressure a lot!
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Coffee: Drinking a lot of coffee can increase blood pressure as well. Reducing your intake might be part of your healing journey.
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Smoking & Alcohol: perhaps worth mentioning, although it might not need much explanation. It is my experience with my clients that a few cigarettes from yesterday can still impact blood pressure measurements measured today.
If you like a short summary on what elevates blood pressure I recommend you to read a handout in the B Better library called High Blood Pressure (just click here). It summarizes the different root causes.
Next time I will dive into different tips on how to lower blood pressure as well.
I hope these tips will help!
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1 Reply
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thank you for this. Looking forward to your low blood pressure post!
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