Many people who have hypertension feel that they have no uncomfortable symptoms and are worried about the side effects of taking antihypertensive drugs, so they choose not to treat this practice is very dangerous. The danger of hypertension is not the symptoms it causes, but the unconscious damage to various organs and blood vessels throughout the body, and when the damage becomes more serious, various complications that can seriously affect the quality of life and even endanger life can occur.
Now we will focus on which organs are damaged by hypertension and what complications can occur.
Heart
Left ventricular hypertrophy
This is the most common type of heart damage. It is well understood that when blood pressure is high the heart is under more pressure to supply blood to the whole body and the burden is increased. With constant stimulation, the heart muscle becomes thicker and thicker.
Coronary heart disease
High blood pressure can promote atherosclerosis of the arteries, and the coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart are inevitably affected, in which case the risk of coronary heart disease increases. The risk of coronary heart disease is 2.6 times higher in people with hypertension than in those with normal blood pressure.
In addition, if hypertension is not well controlled, heart diseases such as arrhythmia and heart failure may occur.
Brain
Hypertension is the most important risk factor for stroke (cerebral infarction, cerebral hemorrhage). Seventy percent of stroke patients in China have high blood pressure.
Cerebral thrombosis and cerebral embolism
These are the two more common types of cerebral infarction. Hypertension causes intracranial arteriosclerosis and thrombosis, which affects the blood supply to brain tissue and causes cerebral infarction. It is also possible that high blood pressure causes blood clots to form in blood vessels elsewhere, blocking the brain arteries with the blood flow, and cerebral infarction occurs.
Gap cerebral infarction
Long-term hypertension can narrow or even occlude the small arteries in the brain, and the brain tissue that does not get blood supply becomes necrotic and softened, forming lesions called lacunar cerebral infarction. If there are multiple lesions, it is called multiple lacunar cerebral infarction. These patients may be asymptomatic or may have mild cognitive and memory abnormalities, and these lesions are often detected on cranial imaging.
Cerebral hemorrhage
Hypertension can cause small intracranial arteries to harden and become brittle, forming aneurysms or directly rupture small arteries, leading to brain hemorrhage.
Transient cerebral ischemic attack
Patients experience numbness, weakness, and inability to move their limbs normally, and some experience vertigo and blackness in front of the eyes, which usually lasts for tens of minutes, and the vast majority can recover completely within a day without sequelae. However, the condition can recur, and one-third of patients will develop cerebral infarction within 5 years, and the risk of heart attack is also high. Patients who have had a transient ischemic attack need to be seen promptly by a neurologist.
Kidney
Kidney damage is also related to the vascular lesions caused by hypertension. In uncontrolled cases, kidney damage and renal hypofunction usually occur after 10 to 15 years of hypertension, and renal failure can occur in some patients.
Many friends worry about long-term taking antihypertensive drugs will not hurt the kidneys, in fact, hypertension than antihypertensive drugs hurt the kidneys.
Blood vessels
The most serious vascular lesion is aortic coarctation. Under normal circumstances, the walls of the arteries are intact, and when lesions occur, blood flow may strip the walls of the aorta to form two layers, at which point the aorta is prone to rupture, endangering lives. When a hypertensive patient suddenly develops tear-like pain in the chest or abdomen, he or she must be sent to the hospital immediately for timely treatment, which may save the patient’s life.
Some lesions of small blood vessels can also bring considerable trouble to patients’ lives, such as pain, claudication, and slow wound healing when the arteries in the legs become narrowed or occluded, affecting the blood supply to the corresponding areas.
Eyes
Hypertension can damage the arteries in the fundus of the eye and cause various retinal lesions that can affect vision and, in severe cases, blindness.
In general, fundus lesions tend to occur in patients with long-term hypertension, but some acute fundus lesions may also occur if blood pressure rises sharply.
The way to avoid these complications is to detect and control hypertension as early as possible. Don’t worry about the side effects of antihypertensive drugs and not treat or use various health instruments or various “natural” therapies of unknown efficacy, which not only fail to achieve the effect of lowering blood pressure, but also delay the condition.
Remember the saying: the harm of hypertension itself is much more serious than the side effects of antihypertensive drugs.