Major Triggers of Hypertension Disorder

Chronic Stress

An individual who experiences chronic stress can have chronic hypertension as a result. When an individual is exposed to a stressful situation, the body produces an influx of several stress hormones. These hormones are produced to prepare the body for a possible fight or flight response and to maximize performance should this type of response be necessary. The stress hormones produced in stressful situations do several things to the body, including increasing the heart rate and narrowing the blood vessels. While a stress response is only meant to have such physical effects temporarily, it can also result in chronic hypertension.

This long-term effect happens when an individual is frequently in stressful situations and becomes adapted to the stress reaction that increases their blood pressure. This adaptation causes them to be sensitive to familiar conditions that may become stressful, causing a release of stress hormones in situations where non-affected individuals would not typically experience a stress response. The more an individual is stressed, the more time their blood pressure is elevated.

Obesity

High blood pressure can be triggered in an individual dealing with obesity as a result of their high ratio of fat to other tissues in the body. Excessive amounts of adipose or fat tissue may not have much of a practical benefit for an individual's body, but they do require all of the same things any other tissues need. The adipose tissue requires a constant supply of blood, nutrients, and oxygen to live. Because the excess tissue requires these things on top of the functional body tissues, the heart, blood, and blood vessels have to work together to circulate more blood to supply this extra fat tissue.

The heart has to take on an increased workload to get the blood through all of the additional ancestry vessels that supply the excess fatty tissues. Blood volume has to increase to sustain homeostasis in the body, and increased blood volume puts more pressure on the walls of the arteries. This mechanism causes the individual to have chronic high blood pressure due to their obesity.