Talk of high blood pressure (hypertension) is not heard in connection with a healthy heart. It’s often heard in association with unhealthy cholesterol levels and diabetes—conditions that contribute to the likelihood of heart disease. Hypertension is an arterial disease resulting from constant elevation of blood pressure. This occurs when blood flowing away from the heart places an excessive amount of force on the vessel walls.
When they’re healthy, your artery walls are elastic; they stretch to let blood flow easily. However, if too much pressure is put on them for too long, they lose that elasticity and become prone to tearing. The tears are very small, but as with many wounds, there is some scar tissue left after healing. These tiny scars are places for LDL cholesterol to settle. The cholesterol that gets stuck in the arterial walls hardens into a plaque. (This condition is called arteriosclerosis.) The plaque narrows the channel through which the blood flows and your heart then has to work harder to push your blood along. A subsequent consequence is that the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to any and all parts of your body becomes compromised.
In a recent post I talked about diabetes increasing the likelihood of imbalances in cholesterol levels. When diabetes is present it can contribute to high blood pressure. Diabetes predisposes arteries to arteriosclerosis in two ways: First, diabetes allows excess sugar to be present in your blood. When that excess sugar reaches your liver it stimulates the production of more cholesterol than your body needs. This overage, along with dietary cholesterol, in the blood tends to be mostly (bad) LDL—the kind that builds up in arteries. Second, the excess sugar that remains in a diabetic’s blood can actually damage/wound vessel walls, creating places for LDL cholesterol to settle. (And amazing as it sounds, and as much bad PR as it gets, this is one of the functions of cholesterol—to repair/fill in—small tears in vessel walls. But, when the same spot is repaired over and over, the repair material builds up and creates the scars on which excess cholesterol gets caught. This build-up hardens, suppresses arterial elasticity, narrows the blood flow channel, makes the heart work harder and leads to high blood pressure.)
As I look at the information on heart health I begin to see how integrated and responsive body functions are. High blood pressure can be the result of the liver responding to a blood imbalance by creating another. And, of course, I wonder how this can be corrected. One answer is food and exercise. I’ve discussed these in relation to cholesterol in my posts. Proper eating and regular, dedicated activity can influence both the type and size of lipoproteins (cholesterol)—which changes the amount of LDL that settles and remains in artery walls. Good habits in these areas can also help control diabetes. However, if you have any of these conditions—dangerous cholesterol levels, diabetes or high blood pressure—you should be working with your doctor to control them. (And you should also know that they are not necessarily the only contributors to high blood pressure.) Also, the heart is not the only organ affected. Among other problems, kidneys (which filter blood) have a role in regulating blood pressure and have to work harder than normal when it is high. So, not only is heart failure a possibility, but so is kidney disease. Another possibility is that blood vessels in the brain could weaken and burst, resulting in a stroke.
In this post on high blood pressure I’ve discussed cholesterol as a contributing factor. Controlling it is essential to a healthy heart.
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