Factors That May Affect Your Blood Pressure

Blood pressure is the pressure inside the blood vessels, it promotes blood circulation all over the cardiovascular system and thus ensures metabolic processes in the body tissues. The numbers of blood pressure depend on individual characteristics, lifestyle and occupation of a person. Normally, it is about 120/80 mmHg. But these numbers change with age, they increase during physical activity or because of emotional stress.    

However, in spite of significant fluctuations in blood pressure, our body has complex mechanisms that regulate its level. These regulation mechanisms tend to return the pressure to its normal values once the action of provoking factors is over. In some cases, these mechanisms might break down and that leads to blood pressure changes. Persistently high blood pressure is called hypertension whereas persistently low – hypotension. There are quite a large number of factors that affect blood pressure, let’s discuss some of them.

Factors causing high blood pressure

• Excess weight. It’s proven that obese and overweight people suffer from hypertension more often than those with a healthy weight because their cardiovascular system experiences high load. In order to provide the whole body with blood, its volume has to be increased, and blood output as well as vessels resistance are also increased – all that leads to an increase in blood pressure.
• Smoking. This unhealthy habit causes vessel constriction that keeps blood pressure at a level above the norm. Physicians note that smokers are at a higher risk of developing atherosclerosis and ischemic heart disease, which are a ‘perfect’ company to hypertension.
• Alcohol. Alcohol consumption contributes to increase in the tone of sympathetic nervous system, thus, it increases the tension of the vessels and causes high blood pressure. Physicians recommend limiting the daily consumption of hard liquors up to 60 ml and wine – 200 ml.
• Salt. Researchers have analyzed the data obtained from various tests and found out that excessive salt consumption overstimulates human nervous system. Due to such stimulation, the body starts producing adrenaline, a hormone that, besides other effects, causes vasoconstriction resulting in increased blood pressure.
• Emotional and psychological stress. If the body is under a stress, it starts releasing adrenaline that causes rise in blood pressure. Chronic stress wears out the blood vessels and leads to chronic hypertension.

Factors causing low blood pressure

• Chronic dehydration. Such dehydration, which may lead to arterial hypotension, is usually the result of a prolonged fasting or strict limitation of food intake as a part of some diets.
• Pregnancy might cause hypotension due to increase in the volume of circulating blood.
• Infectious diseases. This is due to the fact that the massive death of microbial cells releases their waste products into the bloodstream. It leads to decrease in blood pressure by reducing the tone of the vessels.
• Allergic reactions (eg. anaphylactic shock) result in production of the so-called biologically active substances (histamine, bradykinin, etc.) that also reduce vascular tone.
• Sedentary lifestyle. In this case, we are talking mainly about patients who remain recumbent for too long, which might lead to inadequate reflexes of the body’s vegetative nervous system that will not let the body control blood pressure. A person needs more time to re-adjust his body to an upright position.
• Adapting to climate changes. Blood pressure drops when the body is adapting to sharp changes of climate and weather conditions.