Many friends with hypertension feel that they have no symptoms of what discomfort and worry about the side effects of taking antihypertensive drugs, so they choose not to treat them.
This kind of practice is very dangerous. The harm of hypertension does not lie in the symptoms it causes, but in the damage to various organs and blood vessels of the whole body unconsciously. When these damages become more and more serious, various complications will occur.
These complications seriously affect the quality of life and even endanger life.
Now let’s focus on which organs hypertension mainly damages and which complications it will cause.
Heart
1. Left ventricular hypertrophy
This is the most common heart damage. It is well understood that when the blood pressure is high, the pressure on the heart to supply blood to the whole body will increase and the burden will increase. Under constant stimulation, the myocardium will become thicker and thicker.
2. Coronary heart disease
Hypertension can promote atherosclerosis in arteries, and the coronary artery supplying blood to the heart will inevitably be affected. In this case, the risk of coronary heart disease will also increase. The risk of coronary heart disease in hypertension patients is 2.6 times that in normal blood pressure patients.
In addition, if hypertension is not well controlled, heart diseases such as arrhythmia and heart failure are also easy to occur.
Brain
Hypertension is the most important risk factor for stroke (cerebral infarction, cerebral hemorrhage). 70% of stroke patients in China have hypertension.
1. Cerebral thrombosis, cerebral embolism
These are two common types of cerebral infarction. Hypertension causes intracranial arteriosclerosis and thrombosis, which affects the blood supply of brain tissue and causes cerebral infarction. It is also possible that hypertension causes blood vessels in other places to form thrombosis, blocking cerebral arteries with blood flow and causing cerebral infarction.
2. Lacunar infarction
Long-term hypertension can narrow or even occlude arterioles in the brain, causing necrosis and softening of brain tissues that cannot be supplied with blood to form lesions, which is called lacunar infarction. If there are multiple lesions, it is called multiple lacunar infarction.
These patients may have no symptoms or slight cognitive and memory abnormalities. These lesions are often found in brain imaging examination.
3. Cerebral hemorrhage
Hypertension can lead to intracranial arterioles sclerosis, brittleness, formation of aneurysms or direct arterioles rupture, leading to cerebral hemorrhage.
4. Transient ischemic attack
The patient’s limbs are numb, weak and unable to move normally. Some of them will suffer from vertigo and blackness in front of them. They usually last for tens of minutes. Most of them can recover completely within one day without sequelae. However, this kind of situation can recur. One third of the patients will develop into cerebral infarction within 5 years and the risk of myocardial infarction is also very high.
Patients with transient ischemic attack need to go to neurology department in time.
Kidney
Renal damage is also related to vascular diseases caused by hypertension. Without control, renal damage and renal hypofunction will generally occur after hypertension lasts for 10-15 years, and renal failure may occur in some patients.
Many friends are worried about whether taking antihypertensive drugs for a long time will hurt the kidney. In fact, hypertension itself is much more serious to the kidney than antihypertensive drugs.
Blood vessel
The most serious vascular lesion is aortic dissection. Under normal circumstances, The wall of the artery is intact. When pathological changes occur, blood flow may peel off the wall of the aorta to form two layers. At this time, the aorta is very easy to rupture and endanger life. When hypertension patients suddenly suffer from chest and abdominal tear-like pain, they must be sent to the hospital immediately and treated in time, which may save the patient’s life.
The pathological changes of some small blood vessels will also bring a lot of troubles to the patient’s life. For example, when the arteries in the legs are narrow or occluded, the blood supply to the corresponding areas will be affected, and pain, lameness and slow wound healing may occur.
Eyes
Hypertension can damage fundus arteries, cause various retinopathy, affect vision, and even blindness in severe cases.
In general, fundus lesions mostly occur in patients with long-term hypertension, but if blood pressure rises sharply, some acute fundus lesions may also occur.
The way to avoid these complications is to find and control hypertension as soon as possible.
Don’t worry about the side effects of antihypertensive drugs and not treat or adopt various health care instruments or various [natural] therapies with unknown curative effects, which will not only fail to achieve the antihypertensive effect, but will delay the illness.
Remember a word: the harm of hypertension itself is much more serious than the side effects of antihypertensive drugs.
Responsible Editor: Chuyang
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