What is a blood pressure?

Imagine a faucet connected to a hose, just like the one you see in a garden. The faucet controls the intensity in which water flows through the hose. The heart is like the faucet because it controls the intensity of the blood flow through the blood vessels.

The blood vessel that connects to the heart and carries blood from the heart to the body is called an artery. When we measure blood pressure, we are measuring the pressure of the blood flowing in the artery against the artery wall.

Which physiological processes cause the rising of blood pressure?

There are three scenarios that can affect the pressure of the fluid against the hose:

• The heart works too intensely – it is like the faucet is turned on to maximum. If we experience any kind of stress – emotional or physical, the body will want to supply more blood to different organs, so that we can overcome it or run away from it. For that reason the heart pumps more blood and beats more intensely.
• It is very common for deposits of cholesterol, calcium, and other substances to accumulate on the blood vessel walls. Those deposits narrow the arteries, causing their walls to stiffen. When blood flows through narrowed calcified arteries it exerts higher pressure on their walls.
• Change may occur in the blood, causing it to become more viscous. Just to get the idea, imagine strawberry jelly flowing through the arteries instead of blood. The thicker the blood, the more pressure it exerts on the artery walls as it flows inside them.

It seems logical to me that the only way to truly fix a problem is to find and remove its root cause. In the case of hypertension, it is crucial to understand and remove the emotional tension and the factors which caused physical changes in the blood and the arteries.