High Blood Pressure
What is high blood pressure?
High blood pressure simply means what the words say: it is high pressure in the circulation of the body - that is, in the blood vessels of the body. That's why we call it high blood pressure. In order to try to understand the high blood pressure patients, we can try to imagine a hose and a garden. If you have a hose with a certain amount of water coming out of it, then you squeeze the tip of the hose, the jet of the water comes out forcefully. It is going to have more pressure in it. Blood pressure is often associated with general narrowing of arteries of the heart, and the treatment for the high blood pressure is going to involve medication. Generally, medication opens up the arteries around the body and therefore reduces blood pressure. Blood pressure in itself is not a problem unless it is extremely high. A little bit of high blood pressure is not going to cause any short term problems. However, it is a risk factor of arterial disease. If the blood pressure is too high in the system for too long, it is going to wear out the artery, which will try to repair itself. By repairing itself, the artery could form a type of scab, usually involving fatty tissues - cholesterol - and that scab is going to narrow the artery and thus cause arterial disease in future. Very severe high blood pressure is potentially dangerous because it can cause strokes or other types of bleeding into different systems of the body. That is malignant hypertension and, thankfully, we rarely see that type of problem. It is a potential medical emergency.
Can you die from stress?
Stress, in itself, is not dangerous. The dangers of stress are when stress is combined with another underlying pathology. If you are perfectly healthy but stressed, you are not going to die from that stress. However, if you are suffering from serious heart disease and you do develop stress, the stress might put an excessive amount of strain on the heart and therefore you may develop heart problems which may be potentially fatal. The problem with stress is that whenever we are stressed or anxious, we release adrenaline into the blood stream. Adrenaline stimulates the heart, pushes up your blood pressure and does a number of things which, when associated with other illness, can be potentially serious. Otherwise, stress is not dangerous.
