What causes high blood pressure?
There is still a lot of uncertainly about the causes of high blood pressure.
For the vast majority of people, over 95% an underlying cause is not found.
These are the people also have ‘essential’ hypertension. It is likely that several factors contribute to high blood pressure in most people.
The chief suspects include:
- An overactive hormone system that relates to the kidney (the rennin-angiotensin system)
- An overactive autonomic nervous system (the part of the nervous system responsible for our unconscious nervous response)
- A fault in the cells of the smaller blood vessels that produce substances leading to blood vessel and increased blood pressure (endothelial cell dysfunction)
- Genetic predisposition (when you may have inherited a tendency to high blood pressure)
- Intrauterine factors, particularly birth weight, that may reflect undernourishment in the fetus and that ‘programme’ our body to develop high blood pressure in later life.
What causes high blood pressure?
