Understanding why high blood pressure is a problem

Generally, normal blood pressure is defined as less than 135mmHg for systolic value (SBP) and less than 85mmHg for diastolic value (DBP). The higher the blood pressure, the more stress is placed on the blood vessels, which can potentially damage them. In the worst case, blood vessel walls can develop holes, causing internal bleeding. When this happens in the brain, it is called a stroke.

High blood pressure also increases the myocardial workload so that the heart must work harder to maintain adequate blood flow to the body. This causes ischemic heart disease (IHD) such as a heart attack (myocardial infarction) and angina. People with hypertension have the increased risk of suffering a stroke. Conversely, those with normal blood pressure have a lesser risk of ischemic heart disease (myocardial infarction and angina) and stroke. In conclusion, keeping blood pressure within a normal range to prevent these occurrences is of the utmost importance.

• Patients either have consistently high blood pressure through the night or experience blood pressure increases while asleep.
• Patients experience extreme dips in blood pressure at night and extreme surges in the morning.

Difficult to detect

In either case, it is very difficult to detect morning hypertension. By the time patients go to see a doctor, their blood pressure may have already decreased--making the condition impossible to diagnose.

Significant Impact

There are important reasons why patients are being encouraged to differentiate between general hypertension and morning hypertension. It is common knowledge that cardiovascular events and stroke are more common in the morning, and both appear to be linked to morning hypertension. Organ damage and diabetic complications also seem to correlate with morning blood pressure surges.