High Blood Pressure

About one in three adults in the United States has high blood pressure, also called hypertension, according to the American Heart Association. But many are unaware they have the disease because it has no symptoms, says Dr. Brian H. Kahn, a cardiologist at the Heart Center at Overlea Personal Physicians. Who is at risk for high blood pressure? As you get older, high blood pressure is very common. It is part of the aging process. Also, people who eat a lot of salts are more prone to high blood pressure, as well as African-Americans, and we don't know why. There are rare conditions such as blockages in the kidney arteries that can cause it, but in 99 percent of cases, there is no known cause.

The answer to why some obese people develop diabetes and other health problems may be found not in just a love for junk food, but in the bacteria that thrive deep in the human gut. Scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have identified 26 species of intestinal bacteria linked to insulin resistance and the high blood pressure, cholesterol and sugar levels suffered by the obese. These preventable conditions often lead to potentially fatal health problems including stroke, heart disease and diabetes.

Scientists from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and a Michigan pharmaceutical firm said today they have isolated and identified a hormone they believe promotes the development of high blood pressure, a condition affecting some 60 million Americans.If they can now discover how the hormone is made, the scientists said, they may be able to block its production and, as a result, possibly lower blood pressures that are too high."Anything that interferes with the secretion or action of the hormone might be beneficial in the treatment of high blood pressure," said Dr. Mordecai P. Blaustein, professor and chairman of physiology at the university.

The third annual Park Heights Festival will be held from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Pimlico Race Course , in conjunction with National Night Out. The event is free and will offer health exams and screenings for HIV, high blood pressure, diabetes and more in the Health and Wellness village. Free performances will be going on throughout the event from local artists, Park Heights youths and a marching band. In addition, the first 100 children will receive a backpack with school supplies for the fall.

Maryland researchers who have been on a decade-long search for the chemical agent that causes hypertension and drugs to control it said yesterday they have found strong evidence the culprit is a hormone secreted by the adrenal gland.Scientists at the University of Maryland Medical Center said that they observed that levels of the hormone ouabain (pronounced WAH-bane) rose as a patient's blood pressure rose and fell as the patient's pressure fell. In patients whose pressure was normal, ouabain levels did not fluctuate.

Treatment of high blood pressure, which afflicts almost one in four adults, pays off dramatically in lives lengthened and disabling illnesses avoided.Yet urban emergency rooms frequently see patients with untreated hypertension that has soared to life-threatening levels.Almost invariably, these high blood pressure emergencies involve the poor and minorities, according to a New England Journal of Medicine study.And the odds were 3 1/2 to 1 that such patients had no personal doctor."The lack of a primary care physician was the strongest predictor of severe hypertension," conclude Columbia University researchers who studied 93 high blood pressure emergencies.

WASHINGTON -- The number of Americans suffering from high blood pressure dropped an "unprecedented" 14 percent between 1980 and 1991 -- a sign that certain lifestyle changes have begun to work, federal health officials reported yesterday.The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, said that the prevalence of high blood pressure, or hypertension, dipped from 58 million people in 1980 to 50 million in 1991.Officials speculated that increasing attention to physical fitness, healthier diets -- especially lower sodium intake and reduced alcoholconsumption -- and smoking cessation could be responsible for the decline.

WASHINGTON -- The use of a standard hypertension drug to treat a certain type of high blood pressure afflicting mainly older Americans caused a dramatic reduction in the incidence of stroke, heart attacks and other types of cardiovascular disease among a study group, federal researchers reported yesterday.The study has major public health implications for the estimated 3 million to 4 million Americans older than 60 who suffer from isolated systolic hypertension.The study's results showed that low doses of a frequently prescribed diuretic, chlorthalidone, combined in some cases with a low dose of a beta-blocker, atenolol, decreased stroke by 36 percent, heart attacks by 27 percent and all cardiovascular disease by 32 percent.

Millions of people who in the past would have been told that their blood pressure was normal or "high normal" should now be told that they have a condition called prehypertension that threatens their health, according to guidelines issued yesterday by government health experts. The new category includes 45 million Americans whose blood pressure is 120 to 139 millimeters of mercury systolic (the top number in a reading) or 80 to 90 diastolic (the bottom number). People with readings in this range do not have high blood pressure and do not need to take medication.

Doctors fail to diagnose high blood pressure in more than three-quarters of children with the problem, putting them at risk for heart disease and other organ damage later in life, a new study suggests. Calculating elevated blood pressure in children is more complicated than in adults, and many doctors might not bother evaluating kids' pressure because they assume hypertension is an adult problem, the study found. "Hypertension is a disease that doesn't cause symptoms, particularly in children," said Dr. Richard Lange, chief of clinical cardiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who did not participate in the study.

Atrial fibrillation is an abnormal heart rhythm. While it primarily affects people over 65 years old, it can be seen in all age groups, says Dr. Monica Aggarwal, a cardiologist from the Heart Center at Mercy Medical Center. Atrial fibrillation is a rhythm that is faster and more erratic than our normal heart rhythm. It causes decreased blood flow to the rest of the body and leads to blood pooling in the heart, which can lead to clot formation. Smaller clots can break off this thrombus, travel to the brain and cause a stroke.

Congestive heart failure refers to a large number of conditions that affect the structure or function of the heart, making it more difficult for the heart to supply sufficient blood flow to meet the body's needs. Dr. Michael E. Silverman of Cardiovascular Specialists of Central Maryland and chief of medicine at Howard County General Hospital writes about the causes of and treatments for the problem. * Congestive heart failure occurs when one or more of the heart's chambers loses the ability to maintain proper blood flow.

Va'Sean Duvall is a skinny 17-year-old who stays busy with an after-school job, choir rehearsals and school drama productions. On the surface, he doesn't fit the mold of someone - older, obese and inactive - who would be at risk for high blood pressure. Yet he's among as many as 4 million children in the United States estimated to have hypertension, a figure that has grown fivefold in the past generation, according to Johns Hopkins researchers. It's a condition that doctors often fail to diagnose and one that leaves children - particularly African-Americans - at risk for serious heart problems, says a recent Hopkins study.

After decades of warnings about salt, the white, grainy mineral seems poised to become the grocery's next boogeyman, following trans fats, carbs and calories. Health and consumer advocates who see a rising epidemic of high blood pressure and related disease are making the latest push, and that has food makers inching toward change. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently quantified the problem with a report saying most Americans consume more than double the daily recommended level of sodium, a major component of salt.

Racial blood pressure disparity kills 8,000 ATLANTA: The lives of nearly 8,000 black Americans could be saved each year if doctors could bring their average blood pressure down to the average level of whites, a new study indicates. The study, released yesterday in the Annals of Family Medicine, is being called the first to calculate the racial disparities in lives lost to blood pressure control. "We expected it to be big, but it was even larger than we anticipated," said lead author Dr. Kevin Fiscella of the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry.

Baltimore has launched a citywide effort to educate the public on the dangers of high salt intake, which is associated with high blood pressure, particularly among African-Americans. In a city that is nearly 65 percent black, the risks of hypertension, which can lead to heart attack, kidney failure and stroke, are especially high. The city Health Department is bringing together researchers and public health advocates starting in September to try to untangle the reasons for high salt consumption and offer recommendations for how city officials and food suppliers can decrease it. The six-month-long effort was born out of a recent Health Department initiative to reduce health disparities caused by cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in Baltimore.

Many people who have dutifully given up soy sauce, pickles and pretzels in an attempt to prevent high blood pressure by limiting salt may be sacrificing needlessly, a growing number of researchers now believe.For about half of those with hypertension, they say, restricting salt has little effect; for many of the others, the benefits are slim.And just as salt, or sodium, has been downgraded as a culprit in the genesis of high blood pressure, other dietary suspects are gaining ground: Recent studies suggest that for a number of people it is not too much salt, but too little calcium, that sets the stage for hypertension.

If you haven't learned the term yet, make a note of it: prehypertension. The description of elevated but not yet dangerously high blood pressure entered the medical lexicon last year. Three new studies published recently in The Archives of Internal Medicine indicate that prehypertension is widespread and worrisome. "I'm not sure how much people have taken note of it," said Dr. Kurt Greenlund, an epidemiologist at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "People think, `Well, my blood pressure is a little high, but it's not hypertension,' so they wait until it's too late."

Lately, there has been a great deal of buzz about taking steps to keep our brains young and alert. Indeed, it may behoove us to pay attention: There are things most people can do to help keep their brains healthy, says Dr. Majid Fotuhi, director for the Center of Memory and Brain Health at the LifeBridge Health Brain & Spine Institute. Fotuhi also is the author of The Memory Cure: How to Protect Your Brain Against Memory Loss and Alzheimer's. Are there really things that we all can do to try to keep our brains young?

About one in three adults in the United States has high blood pressure, also called hypertension, according to the American Heart Association. But many are unaware they have the disease because it has no symptoms, says Dr. Brian H. Kahn, a cardiologist at the Heart Center at Overlea Personal Physicians. Who is at risk for high blood pressure? As you get older, high blood pressure is very common. It is part of the aging process. Also, people who eat a lot of salts are more prone to high blood pressure, as well as African-Americans, and we don't know why. There are rare conditions such as blockages in the kidney arteries that can cause it, but in 99 percent of cases, there is no known cause.