The latter half of the 20th Century has seen science impact our way of life like never before, evolving it more dramatically than ever. It also saw the rise of some hitherto rare disorders that soon enough became ubiquitous. It is simple: man was never meant to be tethered to a desk, working a sedentary job with minimum exercise. The changing diet patterns, rife with refined sugars and hollow calories, have not helped either. The new lifestyle brought with it several ‘lifestyle disorders’: obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and heart problems.
Out of these hypertension is perhaps the deadliest, primarily because it has few visible symptoms, at least not till the later stages. Hypertension ravages your body silently, and by the time it makes its presence felt, the damage is more or less done. Worse, hypertension brings with it a bouquet of health problems such as varicose veins, strokes, myocardial infarctions and even stomach ulcers.
The time for alarm is already here: the number of people living with hypertension is predicted to be 1.56 billion worldwide by 2025 [1]. In India, a 2013 study revealed that nearly 33% of urban Indians were hypertensive[2] . In other words, the silent epidemic is already well on its way to being an epidemic.
So what exactly is hypertension? Put in layman’s terms, a person who has a resting blood pressure higher than 140 over 90 mmHg (millimeters of mercury) is hypertensive. This is meant to exclude all external factors such as exertion or mental stress that may cause the BP to rise higher than normal. Also, the person is not normally classified as hypertensive based on a single reading alone.
Let us now understand the causes of hypertension. While certain factors predominantly expose you to a higher risk of being hypertensive, such as old age, obesity or certain medications, the main factors leading to the widespread growth of hypertension are mainly lifestyle related. Excessive alcohol intake, smoking or chewing tobacco, eating a diet high in fats and salt-content., low potassium intake and physical inactivity are contributory factors to a lifestyle that exposes you to a greater risk of high BP. Hereditary health issues and chronic stress are also prominent risk factors.
Those who can identify even one of the aforementioned risk factors to be a part of their lifestyle are at risk, and therefore owe it to themselves and their loved ones to get themselves regularly checked up. This is one of the easiest views to save yourself from hypertension and the problems that it brings regular monitoring and checkups. Understand that this is the only way to deal with a silent epidemic.



About Express Clinics: Express Clinics is chain of multispecialty OPD clinics. Express Clinics aspires to be a new age integrated healthcare model providing services such as General, Specialist & Super Specialist Consultation, Pathology, Radiology, Diagnostics & Heath Checks Services – All under one roof.

[1] Medical News Today: 15 December 2015
[2] www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.in 30 April 2014