All about blood pressure and hypertension - the scary stuff you need to know

What's All This About Hypertension, Then?

Well, it's high blood pressure.

And that's a big deal... because...?

IT CAN KILL YOU, DAMMIT!

Or worse.

Yes, elevated blood pressure, all by itself can kill you, by triggering heart attacks or fatal strokes. But, it can also ruin your kidneys, making life miserable for you for years and years until you do die.

Or it can contribute to blindness. Or it can trigger non-fatal strokes that rob you of your basic abilities and your dignity, and leave you trapped in your head, waiting to die... while your caregivers wait for you to die.

Think of that. You just hit (say) retirement age, and suffer a massive stroke. All the marvellous advances of modern science jump into action and keep your body alive for the next twenty years. But half of your body doesn't work, and the other half is feeble and twitchy.

Half of your field of vision is gone, so you can't even read for yourself anymore, and you get confused by any TV show that's got more action than talking heads.

Your wife has to brace herself each time she visits and makes a brave face for the shrivelled shell in the bed - you. This is what she gets instead of a loving companion for her "golden years". The staff has to turn and re-position you constantly, to keep ahead of the bed sores.

The Reason for This Page

Did that sound brutal? It was supposed to. Hypertension, is serious business.

It's also big business for pharmaceutical companies (at your expense). And it brings misery both to you and to people you you love; you know, the ones who have to take care of you when you are paralyzed and need a bed pan and can't remember what happened five minutes ago.... those people; remember them?

Every other page on this website deals with wear-and-tear stuff that hurts your body and cramps your style, but it's stuff you can live with. You don't have to do anything about back pain, shoulder pain, foot pain, body odor, or whatever. But this? This topic is different. This is the one that is killing you - or worse (see above) - right now!

This is THE ONE that you cannot afford to put off, but because it has almost no symptoms, it's the easiest to ignore. Don't do that.

What to do?

The table below lists our blood-pressure-related pages on this MHT

site. Go read them to learn about blood pressure, how it goes wrong, and what you can do about it before it kills or cripples you.

And if this page wasn't where you wanted to be, then return to the Home page from this blood pressure page.

Still dithering?

Gaaaaaahhh! Why do we want to grab you and shake some sense into you?

Have you got kids? Bad enough they should lose their Dad to a sudden coronary or cerebral "event" (as the doctors like to call it), but wouldn't it be even worse if they had to spend the rest of their growing-up years taking shifts emptying your bed-pan? Or seeing their old man shrivel away because he doesn't even have the motor control/capacity to sit upright in a wheelchair?

The least you can do is find out. After that, you have a starting point from which to make further decisions. But either march to the nearest doctor and find out what your blood pressure is doing, or go buy a kit right now and check your own. Do it. No more excuses. Do it.