Nobody can maintain constant or unchanging blood pressure over one's lifetime. Changes in blood pressure are observed all the time – when exercising, under stress and even after the meals. We generally know that elevated blood pressure is bad since it increases the risk of various diseases. Considerable deviations of the blood pressure upwards or downwards may lead to pathologies associated with heart, nervous system, blood vessels and can cause heart attack or stroke.

Typical blood pressure in a healthy individual is 110/70 or 120/80 mm Hg, where 110 (120) is the upper threshold and 70 (80) is the lower threshold. Elevated blood pressure is when the numbers reach 135/85 – 139/89 mm Hg. If this number reaches 140/90 we can call it hypertension. Symptoms of elevated blood pressure are sense of pressure in the head, headaches, dizziness, sleep disturbances, nervousness, palpitations, sense of cardiac pressure, fatigue and shortness of breath that is mainly observed during exercise and emotional load.

Our lifestyle and daily habits may contribute to the risk of elevated blood pressure – that's a fact; however, it takes time for hypertension to develop. Can there be cases when we eat healthy, lead active lives with exercise and outdoor activities, have no overweight or chronic diseases, nevertheless still have elevated blood pressure? The answer is “Yes"!

Heredity

Heredity is a situation where family members transmit their genetic features to next generations. Family members have common genes, behaviour, lifestyle and environment which may affect their health or risks of disease. Genetic factor may play a role in high blood pressure, heart diseases and other related conditions. It is equally possible that where high blood pressure runs in a family, people have the same environment, eating habits and other factors that exacerbates the risk.

Risk of high blood pressure can increase even more if the heredity is aggravated by unhealthy lifestyle, for example, smoking and poor diet. In order to understand if you have a hereditary susceptibility to elevated blood pressure, family history is a valuable tool to find out the associated health risks and prevent any future diseases.

Age

Age-related changes in blood pressure are mainly associated with condition of blood vessels. As you get older, your blood vessels tend to become less flexible and they narrow. These changes of blood vessels are called atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is one of the most common chronic blood vessel diseases, caused by deposition of fat-like substances, mainly cholesterol, on the blood vessel walls. Since your blood pressure tends to rise as you get older, a risk to get blood vessel diseases increases with age. Typical blood pressure of older people is 140-155/80-85 mm Hg.

Gender

Elevated blood pressure affects both sexes, nevertheless observations show some variability in frequency and severity of occurrence. Men tend to have elevated blood pressure more often, but this difference is found only until 60 years of age, because occurrence thereof considerably increases in postmenopausal women. Besides, we also have data on gender-specific efficiency of various blood-pressure lowering medication groups. It can be explained with different levels of sex hormones, renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, specifics of sympathetic nervous system, and elasticity of arteries.

Race or ethnic background

Some studies show that people with dark skin develop elevated blood pressure more often than Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, Caribbean populations, American Indians or Alaska natives. Both clinical guidelines and arterial pressure prevention strategies recognise racial differences in terms of risk of hypertension or elevated blood pressure.