Essential hypertension.if i control it with drugs?

Well, It means nothing more than " most people have it, and it is not attributable to any specific explainable cause." - and that it isn't one the so-called "other kinds" -like Secondary, or "isolated". Other names for it are 'primary' or 'age-related'... The word "essential" in this sense is gobbledegook ,

- What the doctors are struggling to say is "we don't know what causes it, why it happens to some people and not others, ....- there's a lot of it about, and we got to classify it. Since it seems very ordinary, let's call it "essential".

There's absolutely no more to it than that.

All nonsense of course, - you can safely ignore it, because it exists only in the minds of the medical profession, who don't understand how the cardiovascular system works.

Quite simply, The human heart develops the same pressure (well, pretty well, that is) whether you're young, or old, or fit or sclerotic...

The silly assertion that "the heart has to generate higher pressure to drive the blood round as your arteries harden with age" is absolute tosh and piffle.. It doesn't. There is not a shred of evidence to support this silly concept.

High BP readings at the upper arm are completely illusory. Such readings are bound to rise, with age, but the higher readings aren't caused by higher pressures generated by the heart. Honestly!

Forget it, and don't take the pills and potions!

(Especially beta-blockers).

EDIT: Renato, - Please don't misunderstand me, The readings are there, and higher in older people, but they simply aren't true readings of the pressures developed by the heart to drive the blood round. Yes, the monitor readings rise, but this isn't because the heart develops higher pressure. It's because in the young, the greater elasticity of their arterial walls absorb roughly half of the developed pressure. So it SEEMS their pressures are lower.

But in fact central aortic pressures measured invasively are roughly equal in both young and old.

And Oh I forgot. .. , and while you're 'thinking about this" , can I ask you to ponder how a mean arterial pressure of 93 mms/Hg (indicated by a monitor employing auscultation at the brachial -or radial- artery) can drive 5000ccs of blood round a vascular loop whose TPR is 0.02 mms.Hg/cc/min? - bearing in mind, of course, that Pm = CO x TPR... as you'll no doubt be familiar with, in view of your kind comments

EDIT: Upon re-reading the above it seems it may be construed as sarcasm , and I assure you,- it isn't. I'm in deadly earnest, and most sincere

EDIT: -Renato, Thank you for your posting. The difficulty with your conjecture is that in the whole of medical history no evidence has ever been found or recorded, of any rise in TPR associated with the aging process. Quite the reverse in fact.

Studies designed to investigate the relationship between the two have concluded that there is none. The TPR of an aged sclerotic is almost the same as a juvenile's.

The significance of this is quite fundamental, in that if the 'received wisdom' on hypertension were to be correct (which it clearly isn't) then increasing driving pressure would result in increasing CO if TPR remains essentially constant. (Darcy's Law)....

But it doesn't. We all circulate the same total systemic flow,-within finite small variations.

well, reading Mrs Doubtfire answer is quite interesting, I will resign my first thought of saying "what'a crazy person would say this" because I think she is not kidding, and she is serious. I will try to think a little bit over this. I do accept that there are a bunch of phenomena that only exists on the minds of the medical profession (and mainly on the minds of the pharmaceutical industry) as the cholesterol issue, the osteoporosis problem or the need of the "prozac nation". But from there to say that high BP readings on your arm are completely illusory, I certainly doubt it. There is plenty of epidemiological evidence linking (from a hundred years ago to the date) high blood pressure with cardiac, cerebral vascular, kidney and other problems, I would say that from the many diseases (real or commercial) that man has found, hypertension is one of the most documented but being true also that the label "hypertensive patient" is as dangerous as the disease itself, I wouldn't dare to oversee its dangers.

Finally tholeeder, "essential" hypertension simply refers to that kind of hypertension to which there has not been found a cause (is not renal, is not cardiac nor vascular), just the one that appears in life with no apparent reason. And, yes, indeed, you don't need it.

EDIT; Mrs Doubtfire, certainly I was right when thinking you were serious, and I am glad to have read your kind response (which I do appreciate). Now, certainly the mean pressure of ejection of the left ventricle remains constant (near constant) through all the life, is the periferal pressure (the one we meassure with the monitor in the brachial art) what worries us the most, in other words, is not the pressure in the heart (CO) the one that starts the phenomena seen in hypertension but the rising of the periferal resistance (TPR), so, when it raises, backwards it will damage the heart (in a retrograde way I mean), so finally, the heart will have to raise its ejection pressure in order to overcome that periferal resistance, and as the heart can't do it always, that will lead us to a lower CO, and cardiac failure. And that is the moment when you wouldn't use beta blockers, not before.

Finally Tholeeder, the meaning of the word 'essential' is very well explained by Mrs Doubtfire on her first paragraph. Is "in the escence" of the person that hypertension develops, and certainly, not being the most appropiate term, it helps understand that is the kind of hypertension without known cause.

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Essential hypertension is medical term to describe a particular type of hypertension. There are several forms; this is one of them.

And, no, you don't need it.

Just consult your dr and take the medicines as prescribed.

Dieting helps lower cholesterol. Eat less animal fat & don't eat before bed.