Do you know which the most common cardiovascular disease?

When faced with this question most people would reply as Heart failure or Cardiac arrests but both Heart failure as well as Cardiac arrest are medical conditions, medical emergencies, caused by a different, very common ailment, known as blood pressure. Yes, an abnormality in your blood pressure is the root cause of all types of heart diseases. A report by the World Health Organization reveals that high blood pressure affects about 20% of the adult population and 25% of the children worldwide. Ironically one third ARE NOT EVEN AWARE.

What is blood pressure?

Blood pressure or specifically vascular pressure is the force exerted by the circulating blood on the walls of blood vessels. The blood pressure is basically the pressure in the arteries in the human body .A high blood pressure can be very damaging to your health. It is divided into two groups’ essential and secondary high blood pressure. When a doctor is unable to identify the cause of high blood pressure it is known as primary or essential else secondary high blood pressure.

Now let us consider the source of high blood pressure, what is its cause, effects and consequences. The major tangible factors are basically the elements of unhealthy living such as certain medications, excessive use of caffeine, alcohol, tobacco or street drugs and stimulants such as cocaine steroids etc. Smoking reduces the effect of treatment on the patients. Other important factors include excessive weight or obesity, stress, excessive use of salt in food etc.

A common thread in all of the above factors of high blood pressure is that they directly or indirectly affect the blood vessels. They damage arteries, arterioles, capillaries and veins, which together constitute blood vessels.

Let us see exactly how blood vessels affect your blood pressure.

All the blood vessels together are responsible for circulating the blood in our body. Arteries are the major blood vessels of the heart from where all the blood is supplied to the body through smaller blood vessels. When, the heart pumps blood into the arteries during heartbeats, the pressure inside the arteries increases rapidly. A peak level is reached, which is known as systolic blood pressure.

How Arteries Regulate the Blood Pressure?

Let us see how blood vessels affect the blood pressure. Consider the arteries. The systolic pressure is calculated by:

• How much blood the heart pumps into arteries.
• Stiffness of the arteries.
• Structure and tone of smaller blood vessels.

The stiffness of these vessels is determined by two characteristics:

The extent to which vascular muscle cells in the wall of your arteries are contracting, and the properties of the scaffold in which the pipes are placed.

With aging the changes within the walls of the arteries will not only worsen when blood pressure is sustained at higher levels, but might be a cause of the high blood pressure. All these blood vessels are affected by external factors such as smoking, drinking etc, as all of them constrict the opening of blood vessels and are the main cause of thickening of these walls.

With age the stiffening and thickening of vascular structure begins to grow. Arterial wall comprises of the adventia, the media and the intima. A layer of cells are attached to the intima is called endothelial cells, which acts as a barrier between the blood in the lumen and the innermost layer of the arterial wall.

Endothelial cells perform many functions including forming a barrier to prevent any undesirable substance from entering the arterial wall.

But the lifetime of endothelial cells isn’t infinite. With age they blunt and fail to renew themselves. Their barrier becomes leaky.

This provides a chance for a disease namely atherosclerosis in which the accumulation of cholesterol and other undesirable substance takes place, to flourish. These are known as plaques. Sometimes these plaques can enlarge to such a degree that they completely block blood flow, thereby increasing the systolic pressure. This damages the cells of the body organs that depend upon the artery. Coronary atherosclerosis is the main cause of stroke as it cuts of the oxygen and blood supply to the heart.

Remedies

How blood vessels affect your blood pressure is a vast and interesting subject.

However we should be aware of the remedies and the new technologies. We cannot halt the age process but we can enjoy the rest of our lifespan in a healthy fashion. Cardiologists have Doppler and ultrasounds by which they can accurately assess the structure and stiffness of our blood vessels.

But for his you need to be aware and get yourself a regular medical check-up every six months. In addition you need to put aside every pursuit of yours, which may lead to such a condition such as smoking, drinking, obesity etc.

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