Improving Brain Health by Regulating Blood Pressure
Treatment and management hypertension can prevent such conditions, especially by maintaining a healthy brain.
Hypertension and health
Blood pressure is the mechanism by which blood can enter all over the body through arteries to reach organs and bodily members.
Having hypertension, also known as hypertension, is when the pressure is above 140 / 90mmHg. While we can all have high blood pressure as needed, constantly having high blood pressure can cause many back effects to the body, including the brain.
The most common causes of hypertension include intake, obesity, or being high in sodium (salt) leading from excess weight to atherosclerosis (thickening and stiffening of the arteries), excessive alcohol consumption, sedentary lifestyle (material inactivity), in old age, family history of high blood pressure due to genes, to be African American or of South Asian origin, and eventually to be male before age 55, or the female after 55 years.
Typically, having high blood pressure does not result in any noticeable symptoms, and only regular blood pressure readings can indicate the presence of high blood pressure. The symptoms would only occur until health complications occur due to the excessive hypertension.
Typically, these include peripheral artery disease, retinal damage, chronic kidney disease, heart attacks, and heart failure in extreme cases.
Hypertension and the brain
In addition to all of the complications listed above, chronic hypertension can also lead to several potentially fatal conditions in the brain, such as aneurysms and stroke. If they are smaller and persistent (such as a transient ischemic attack, or small vessel brain disease), they can lead to vascular dementia and other dementias, which tend to have a poor prognosis and are often incurable.
A recent study published in Neurology from The Lancet verified structural abnormalities in the brain by performing MRI, functional changes by PET imaging as well as cognitive assessments in a group of 502 people aged between 69-71 in the UK ( none who had dementia).
Previously, blood pressure readings were taken at ages 36, 43, 53, 60, and 69 years old.
Specific ranges in minimum blood pressure of 36-43 years have been associated with smaller whole-brain volume at age 70, while larger steps in systolic blood pressure between 36 and 43 years have been associated with lower whole-brain volume. smaller hippocampal volumes at 70.
At the age of 70, these observations were not associated with beta-amyloid levels or significantly poor cognitive score scores.
However, this study indicates deep structural changes in the brain due to hypertension and larger rungs in blood pressure. These can lead to dementia onset in a decade or so – which has not been verified at this point by this study.
Improving Brain Health By Regulating Blood Pressure
Several epidemiological studies have positively posed hypertension as a primary risk factor for lesions of cerebral small vessel ischemic disease (SVID) and white matter (WMLs).
These themselves are associated with cognitive decline and the onset of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. A recent study published in JAMA performed an MRI study of hypertensive adults over the age of 50 in the US, showing 670 people at the zero line and 449 after a 4-year follow-up.
The primary outcome of this study was a change in the total volume of zero line WML (i.e., how much of an increase in WML would occur).
The group receiving the more brutal intensive antihypertensive treatment showed an increase in volume of WML 4.57 5.49cm3 compared to an increase in volume of WML 4.40 5.85cm3 for those receiving the normal antihypertensive treatment.
This is a difference of + 0.92cm3 for intensive care compared to + 1.45cm3 for normal treatment.
While there are differences between an intensive versus the normal antihypertensive treatment strategy, these differences are small. In summary, consistently having hypertension over 140/90 (chronic hypertension) is associated with many potentially devastating neurological conditions such as stroke and dementia.
Having hypertension in the early to mid-term and having higher rungs in hypertension is associated with larger structural abnormalities in the brain that could be associated with cognitive declines, such as injury burden of white- question.
Managing hypertension throughout the mid-lifespan (reducing from 140 to 120) is associated with beneficial outcomes at WML in the brain which could potentially delay the onset of cognitive decline.
There is a link between high blood pressure in adolescence and brain shrinkage and an increased risk of dementia.
Adults between the ages of 35 and 44 with high blood pressure had smaller brains and were more likely to be diagnosed with dementia than their peers with normal blood pressure, according to research published in the American Heart Association’s Journal of Hypertension.
High blood pressure is common in people between the ages of 45 and 64 and can lead to brain damage and dementia in old age. However, researchers still do not fully understand the age of diagnosis of high blood pressure in people, what effect it can have on its complications.
If this is proven, they say, there will be important evidence that suggests what early interventions should be taken to delay high blood pressure, which may help prevent dementia.
Shrinking the size of the brain means less neurons and connections between them.
The larger the size of the brain, the better the cognitive function, but degeneration of the brain causes degeneration. High blood pressure eventually affects the blood flowing to the brain and can damage its structure. This problem can affect brain function if left untreated.
High blood pressure alone does not condemn those who have it – nearly one in three adults in the United States to dementia. On the other hand, it remains the main cause of heart attacks, stroke and kidney failure.
And when the two are linked, treatment for hypertension offers some hope, although its effects have not been proven in all scientific studies.
As the cases of dementia increase with the aging of the population, the slightest positive effect generated by better blood pressure control could have a large impact on public health, comments Dr. William Thies of the Alzheimer’s Association. Other attempts to prevent dementia.
