High Blood Pressure—Brain Diseases

The brain is the control center of the body. It controls thoughts, memory, speech, and movement. It regulates the function of many organs. When the brain is healthy, it works quickly and automatically. However, when problems occur, the results can be devastating.

Inflammation in the brain can lead to problems such as vision loss, weakness and paralysis. Loss of brain cells, which happens if you suffer a stroke, can affect your ability to think clearly. Brain tumors can also press on nerves and affect brain function. Some brain diseases are genetic. And we do not know what causes some brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease.

The symptoms of brain diseases vary widely depending on the specific problem. In some cases, damage is permanent. In other cases, treatments such as surgery, medicines, or physical therapy can correct the source of the problem or improve symptoms.

• Basal ganglia dysfunction (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Brain abscess (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Brain surgery (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Central pontine myelinolysis (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) collection (Medical Encyclopedia)
• EEG (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Hepatic encephalopathy (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Pseudotumor cerebri (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (Medical Encyclopedia)

Also called: Benign essential hypertension, Essential hypertension, HBP, HTN, Hypertension

Blood pressure is the force of your blood pushing against the walls of your arteries. Each time your heart beats, it pumps blood into the arteries. Your blood pressure is highest when your heart beats, pumping the blood. This is called systolic pressure. When your heart is at rest, between beats, your blood pressure falls. This is called diastolic pressure.

Your blood pressure reading uses these two numbers. Usually the systolic number comes before or above the diastolic number. A reading of

• 119/79 or lower is normal blood pressure
• 140/90 or higher is high blood pressure
• Between 120 and 139 for the top number, or between 80 and 89 for the bottom number is called prehypertension. Prehypertension means you may end up with high blood pressure, unless you take steps to prevent it.

High blood pressure usually has no symptoms, but it can cause serious problems such as stroke, heart failure, heart attack and kidney failure.

You can control high blood pressure through healthy lifestyle habits such as exercise and the DASH diet and taking medicines, if needed.

NIH: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

• ACE inhibitors (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Blood pressure measurement (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Blood pressure monitors for home (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Controlling your high blood pressure (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Drug-induced hypertension (Medical Encyclopedia)
• High blood pressure (Medical Encyclopedia)
• High blood pressure – children (Medical Encyclopedia)
• High blood pressure and eye disease (Medical Encyclopedia)
• High blood pressure medications (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Hypertensive heart disease (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Low-salt diet (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Malignant hypertension (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Renovascular hypertension (Medical Encyclopedia)