|
Essential Hypertension
Essential hypertension is also known as primary hypertension. This type of hypertension is said to be essential or primary because the hypertension is its own primary cause. This is to say the health care providers cannot find any underlying cause for the abnormal blood pressure readings. The patient simply has hypertension and that's it.
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 at all a devastating prognosis as it is common for people with properly treated hypertension to live full and normal lives.
Treating Essential Hypertension
One school of thought is the primary hypertension actually does have an underlying cause but the medical profession has yet to discover what it could be. The reason this hypothesis is viable is that some patients will respond to the same treatment that other patients may not benefit from at all. This leads to the conclusion patient A may, indeed have a truly primary hypertension while patient B still has an undiscovered underlying problem.
Nonetheless, trial and error along with an experienced doctor's wisdom will always find a medication that will control the patient's hypertension.
Once prescribed, blood pressure medication must be taken every day. Deciding to skip a day is not allowed. It is also against the rules to cut your dosage or, perhaps because you don't feel good, take an extra pill.
Blood pressure medications are designed to work by being taken in consistent dosages every day at the same time during the day. By altering this routine, even slightly, the patient could render the medication ineffective. This, in turn, would put him or her at a greatly increased risk for a heart attack or a stroke. This, of course, is not a desirable option.
Ask Your Doctor First
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. Thus, this type of hypertension would not be essential, or primary. In fact, old age itself is a common cause of hypertension.
Because hypertension had not been discovered too many generations ago, a very popular hypothesis at this point in time is that essential hypertension is genetic.
|