This is a thorough and in-depth research and handbook on hypertension to raise people awareness towards hypertension, besides aiming at assisting the hypertensive patients to understand hypertension better in terms of fundamental, concept, principle, medication and treatment of hypertension.
"Practical Handbook for Hypertension" consists of two parts written for references of medical students, hypertensive patients and people who conscious about their health. These two series of the handbooks deal with some fundamentals, concepts and treatments of hypertension as a useful guide in an attempts to deal with hypertension.
It is indeed a tough and tiring job to understand the mechanism of some medically termed, terminologies, concepts; treatments wrote academically from multiple sources that you might feel no interest to read. Therefore, I have summarized the facts in the simplest form to make your reading easy, so that you may grasp the concepts better and understand them perfectly.
I hope that this guide may help you obtain the knowledge of hypertension. More importantly, I hope that you will learn to find this handbook a pleasurable knowledge instead of a dreaded one.
Introduction
Cardio-cerebral vascular disease has known as the main culprit for hypertension. Back in the 1920s, people have realized that parents with hypertension will always pass on to the generations. It is not always true, as factors other than genetic factors, such as dietary, smoking, drinking, obesity, environmental and occupational mental and psychological and climate factors may give rise to hypertension.
The occurrences of hypertension can be complicated; the rate of the occurrences is high, coupling with the longer treatment phases, so earlier prevention is always the best solution to cure such disease. The causes are due to congenital factor resulted in longer and twisted carotid artery, the deformity of artery on the base part of the skull, the blood pressure is too high in the arterial systemic over a long time which finally develops into chronic hypertension. The symptoms of hypertension are a result of the central nervous system dysfunction, mental stimulation, emotional fluctuations, increased sympathetic nervous system excitability, and increased secretion of adrenal medulla. This in turns causes the contraction of small arteries, cramps, and hardening resulting in vascular stenosis, and blood pressure continues to increase.
Chapter 1: Foundation of hypertension
Clinical terminology of hypertension
High blood pressure or hypertension in its clinical terminology refers to the abnormal or unusual circumstances of the arterial blood pressure.
The standard measurement released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1999 explained that systolic blood pressure greater than 140 mmHg/ or diastolic blood pressure greater than 90 mmHg is regarded as hypertension.
The Category of hypertension
The first category of high blood pressure is also known as hypertension and its occurrences may due to genetic, smoking, drinking and excessive salt consumption, mental stress, lack of exercise and other underlying factors. More than 90% of the hypertensive patients are accounting for this type of hypertension. At present, it is difficult to cure, but medicinal drugs can control its outbreak.
The second category of hypertension has a clear reason for its outbreak, accounting for 5% to 10%. Its common causes are as follow:
Kidney diseases (such as acute and chronic glomerulonephritis, pyelonephritis and renal artery stenosis)
Vascular lesions (such as vascular malformations or congenital aortic shrink Narrow Syndrome)
Other types of vascular arteritis
Pregnancy-induced hypertension (occurs in the late pregnancy, and in serious cases, the termination of pregnancy is required)
Endocrine diseases (such as pheochromocytoma, primary aldosteronism syndrome)
Brain disorders (such as brain tumors and brain trauma)
Drug-induced factors (such as long-term oral contraceptives and long-term use of hormone).
Characteristics of Hypertension
Currently, China has 160 millions of hypertensive patients and according to China's Health Ministry; hypertension has become the "first killer" in China. Medical experts have rated hypertension as the world's most scary killers that take away many human lives each year. Hypertension is a silent killer and it shows no symptoms at all. Some may have dizziness, headaches or nasal bleeding and other related symptoms. Even though many patients who have suffered from high blood pressure for many years and no matter how high their blood pressures are, they will not experience any discomfort feelings. Therefore, hypertension does more harm than good to our health as it can take away somebody's life in any time. Regardless of its severity, one should seek for treatment as soon as possible as way to prolong life span.
Persons who are 35 or above, smokers, obese, high blood lipids, or with a family record of hypertension should get their blood pressure checked once each year. For those who have been suffering from hypertension, regardless of age, they should go for blood pressure diagnosis at least once a month in order to monitor and to maintain the normal blood pressure.
The Rhythm of Hypertension
The blood pressure shows significant cyclical changes within a day. It increases in a day and decreases at night. In other words, the blood pressure will decline while one sleeps at night and it rises again by the following morning when one gets up. Therefore, one should take medication in the morning but does not exercise at this time particularly for those with significant and chronic hypertension records. One should do exercise before dinner.
