In life, many friends with high blood pressure often ask the question, “Why does blood pressure rise?” when they seek medical attention. To be honest, at this stage of medical development, no medical expert can tell the exact cause of hypertension. To “cover up” our “ignorance”, we use the term “primary hypertension” to refer to 90-95% of hypertension. For the remaining 5% to 10% of hypertension, we found that they were caused by other diseases and accordingly called them “secondary hypertension”. Although we are not yet able to identify the cause of hypertension for every person with hypertension, the physiological aspects of blood pressure are being studied in depth by the medical community. For the moment, we know that there are two aspects: heart and blood vessels. Heart The greater the contraction force of the heart, the greater the pressure on the blood vessels, and the higher the blood pressure; the faster the heart beats, the higher the blood pressure. Blood vessels The less elastic the large arteries are, the less able they are to regulate blood pressure and the more likely they are to have a large systolic-diastolic pressure difference; the greater the resistance of small blood vessels, the higher the blood pressure will also be. The changes in the heart and blood vessels, in addition to being related to the individual’s constitution, are also influenced by various hormones and nerves. Blood pressure fluctuates even in healthy people In daily life, blood pressure fluctuations are much more than what we have analyzed above. The blood pressure of a healthy person remains basically constant in daily life, but it is not set in stone. In our lives, we have all experienced, to a greater or lesser extent, that emotional stress, nervousness, exercise, and other factors can raise blood pressure. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience that if your doctor measures your blood pressure as high during a physical exam, he or she will ask you to go out and relax for 10 to 15 minutes before repeating the measurement? The reason for this is to eliminate the effects of nervousness. We judge that a person’s blood pressure is normal, not that it is always at a normal level, but that the increase in blood pressure has not become a norm and has not caused damage to the organs. Anyone’s blood pressure will rise under certain stimuli, but normal people’s blood pressure always tends to be normal, and it will quickly return to its usual state after the stimulus is removed. However, in patients with hypertension, blood pressure is higher than the normal range for a long period of time, which indicates that there is a change in the body’s ability to control blood pressure. Although we do not fully understand the mechanism of these changes, and can only call this part of hypertension “primary hypertension” in a very general way, some of the risk factors for hypertension are already nailed down, such as obesity, smoking and alcohol, genetics, etc.