Posts Tagged ‘essential hypertension’
by Jason Falson
With essential hypertension no cause is examined because essential hypertension has no underlying causes. This type of hypertension occurs basically out of nowhere and without being provoked, it just happens. Another name for essential hypertension is primary hypertension. This is because it is seen as its own primary cause.
The Prognosis
Essential hypertension will usually need to be watched throughout the patient's lifetime. There are cases where changes in habits, such as quitting smoking or cutting down on alcohol consumption will lower the patient's blood pressure reading without having to be administered medications. However, most times blood pressure lowering medications will need to be taken. This is not a devastating prognosis as it is common for people with properly treated hypertension to live full and normal lives.
The Overall View
Essential hypertension is a somewhat broad term since sometimes one patient may be helped by a treatment that another patient was oblivious to. Still, the fact every patient doesn't respond to the same treatment doesn't mean these patients are not inflicted with the type of elevated blood pressure that is truly essential, or primary. The only thing that is truly important with high blood pressure is finding out what will control it.
Nonetheless, trial and error along with an experienced doctor's wisdom will always find a medication and/or plan of attack that will control the patient's blood pressure.
As in all cases of hypertension, the proper medication must be taken everyday. Blood pressure medication is constructed in such a way it is only effective when taken daily and may not be useful at all if some daily dosages are skipped.
Another fact about hypertension medication is that it is meant to be taken at the same time of the day each time it is taken. As we have already seen, skipping dosages renders blood pressure medication less effective and now we see, this medication needs to be administered at even intervals. Not following these instructions on dosage and when exactly to take the medication may put the patient at risk of not being able to control the hypertension. Of course, there are many unwanted complications associated with uncontrolled high blood pressure.
Monitor Your Medication's Effect
If you don't feel good, tell your doctor. Maybe your medication will need to be altered in type or dosage. However, sometimes changing from one medication to another, or one dosage to another, needs to be done gradually. Your doctor will know how to proceed with this change. Doing it wrong could cause more problems than just not feeling good.
Essential hypertension is quite common today. It is more often seen in adolescents than it is adults. This is simply because there are far more underlying reasons for an older person to have hypertension than a younger one. So of course, when there are other reasons the hypertension is present it would not be primary or essential hypertension.
Essential hypertension is relatively new to the medical lexicon and so, why people get it is not well understood. Some believe, because it comes on without known causes, it is inherited. Only time will tell us whether or not this theory will hold true.
About the Author:
The author of this article is Jason Falson. After overcoming his case of high blood pressure which he had suffered for two decades, he has build a Website designed to help others do the same. Its main pages can be found at: Symptoms of Hypertension. and Essential Hypertension.
