If you read my previous post (Self Medication; The Self Inflicting Problem in the health Sector), you can recall that I mentioned my uncle and his visit to the hospital, as well as how he knew he had hypertension but had been self-medicating himself for Typhoid and Malaria. We are not looking into self-medication in today, we are looking at Hypertension (high blood pressure).
Severe Body pain, headaches, Inability to sleep, dizziness, and difficulty breathing at very rare occurrence. These were the symptoms my uncle would make mentions of. He kept on with this for days, and all I had to do was convince him to go to the hospital. Convincing completed, When the doctor told him his Blood Pressure was high, he still didn't believe what he was seeing clearly before him. Anyway, he has been on treatment since, and I have been visiting the hospital every two days for examinations. It is a norm here for people to believe that when a person has high blood pressure, then the person has been thinking a lot, and my uncle kept emphasizing that he hasn't been thinking, so I decided to explain to him, how I will be explaining to you.
What is Normal and What is Not
Blood is needed in our body, and this blood is carried by arteries, from the heart to other part of the body, and blood pressure is the pressure asserted on the artery wall as a result of the pressure from the heart. When a person has high blood pressure, they are opened and likely to start having diseases such as stroke, heart diseases, Heart attack, and kidney diseases. You start to tell yourself that you are lucky, since you do not have a high blood pressure but statistics from the million hearts shows that 47% of adults in the United States suffers from hypertension with a systolic blood pressure of 130 mmHg or greater than, and a diastolic blood pressure of 80 mmHg or more. Hypertension according to the National Vital Statistics Reports shows that 4.7% of Americans die as a result of Hypertension. With that said, what is Systolic Blood Pressure and Diastolic Blood Pressure? If you go to the hospital in this part of the world to know your blood pressure, you will hear something like "your blood pressure is at 110mmHg/70mmHg", and you ask yourself what that means? The answer is straight, Systolic and Diastolic blood pressure.
Systolic Blood Pressure which is the measure of the pressure, the blood has against the artery walls when the ventricles squeeze. In layman terms, it measures the pressure of the blood when the heart beats. Diastolic Blood Pressure measures the pressure of blood in the walls of the artery when the heart relaxes and the ventricles get refilled with blood. This being said, healthline.com explains the level of a person's Blood Pressure, you can check it out to understand when the blood pressure is normal, elevated, in stage 1, or in stage 2 hypertension, and the hypertensive crisis stage.
Hypertension and Pain Relief Medication
Hypertension and pain have been a concern in the medical world. Not like there isn't an answer to seeing that the nervous system, and cardiovascular systems interact with one another, since research published on frontiersin shows, since pain acts as a preventive mechanism when tissues are damaged. According to research by Stephen Bruehl published on science direct, when a person feels acute pain, it could lead to a rise in the blood pressure of the person, which is said to be a survival mechanism in the body. According to a journal titled The Relationship Between Blood Pressure and Pain, Acute/chronic pain is associated to tissue trauma, and it promotes survival in the person.
My uncle first complained about pain, the pain started from his arm and he kept on talking about it. The more he felt this pain on a daily, it looked like his BP kept increasing. While my uncle tried to self-medicate on pain relievers, he kept complaining that he couldn't get any sleep and this made the pain continue.
According to the research titled Analgesic Use and Risk of Subsequent Hypertension in Apparently Healthy Men, it showed that women who used NSAID, acetaminophen, and aspirin, had higher risk of elevated hypertension. It affirms that using analgesic could lead to an increase in high blood pressure due to the kidney inhibiting Prostaglandins which are allows the dilation of the blood vessel, therefore reducing the pressure of the blood when the heart pumps. Not all pains should be attacked with a pain relieve. Anti-inflamatory . It was until my visited the hospital and began proper medical care before he understood that the pain relievers he was using were increasing his Blood Pressure.
I might have White Coat Hypertension
When I am working, I usually experience an increase in heart beat rate, causing me to have headache at some point, and in some cases, chest pain. Everytime I go to the hospital for a checkup, my blood pressure never goes above 120mmHg for the systolic blood pressure and never goes above 80mmHg for the Diastolic blood pressure. I have tried severally to go confirm this at the health care severally but then, my BP looks normal. I have been given medications but then, I realize that whenever I am working, it looks like my chest has a heavy load and my heart beat becomes very strong. What I usually do is to rest everytime I feel this, but in my cause of studying my uncle's BP story, I realize that I could be suffering from White Coat Hypertension.
Ahajournals refers to White coat hypertension as a condition where) the Blood pressure of a person is elevated (above 120mmHg/80mmHg) while working at the office or doing things related to stressing the brain, and becomes normal when outside the office or outside activities that stresses the brain. It is very funny that in my case, I do not have this syndrome when I am with the doctors, I am very relaxed when I am in front of the doctors as in most cases, we are always chit-chatting. While I am not sure of how this is, I have decided to have a 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. I will let you know
how this goes.
Conclusion
While hypertension is a very serious condition, CDC says that it is common to have essential or primary hypertension in people within the age of 18 years and above, with 63.1% of adult above the age of 60 having high BP, and people with family history are likely to have high BP. Higher activities at all time, could lead to a high heart rate which could lead to a high blood pressure. Obese as well as diabetic patients are liable of having High BP. It is important to always rest and visit the hospital at all times to prevent High Blood pressure, which could lead to other cardiac diseases. I will let you know what the outcome of my 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring will be, but for now, please watch your health.
Image from commons.wikimedia