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Over the past few years changes in lifestyle and diet in many western societies have resulted in an increase in the number of individuals with high blood pressure.

High blood pressure (otherwise known as hypertension, or more correctly arterial hypertension) can be a dangerous condition that seldom has any symptoms and which, if left undetected and untreated, can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure, arterial aneurysm or renal failure - any one of which is a life-threatening condition.

So precisely what is high blood pressure and just what causes it?

The arteries within your body are constantly filled with blood which produces a normal 'background' pressure on the walls of the arteries. When your heart pumps freshly oxygenated blood around the body it forces this blood into the arteries which briefly raises the pressure exerted on the walls of the arteries with every beat of the heart. These two pressures are known as the systolic pressure (the higher pumping pressure of the heart) and the diastolic pressure (the reduced normal or 'background' pressure).

Normal blood pressure varies from one individual to the next but, in general, systolic pressure should be about 120 mm Hg and diastolic pressure ought to be about 80 mm Hg. This is generally shown as a pressure of 120/80.

If your blood pressure starts to rise and then remains at a level above 120/80 then you are said to be 'prehypertensive' and, although this is not serious in itself, it is an indication that you may be at risk of developing hypertension and all of the problems which are associated with it. If your blood pressure rises to, and remains at, a level of 140/90 or above you are suffering from hypertension and steps ought to be taken to reduce your blood pressure.

So what causes your blood pressure to rise and remain elevated?

Well, there are several factors at play here and to begin there is a group over which you have little, if any, control. This group of factors includes low birth weight, a variety of genetic factors, certain forms of diabetes (especially type 2 diabetes) and your age (as we grow older the arteries have a tendency to become fibrous and lose their elasticity, producing a smaller cross-sectional area through which the blood can flow).

The second group of factors is far more controllable and includes leading a sedentary lifestyle, high quantities of salt and saturated fats in the diet, being overweight, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, stress and employment in certain occupations such as motorway maintenance or flying.

The majority of these factors are of course treatable and, in a lot of cases, a simple adjustment to your eating habits and the addition of a little exercise into your daily diary is all that is necessary to solve the problem. The difficulty however is that, without any real symptoms, the vast majority of people do not know that they have high blood pressure in the first place.

So how can you go about curing the problem?

Fortunately the answer to this question is very simple. All you have to do is to pop into your doctor's office regularly (for most of us about twice a year should be sufficient) and ask him or her to check your blood pressure for you. The process is pain free, simple and quick and will provide you with peace of mind and can save your doctor a lot of work, time and expense later on when you are forced to drop by his office once hypertension has set in.

If you are not too keen on visiting your doctor then an excellent alternative now is to simply monitor your own blood pressure. A number of easy to operate and quite inexpensive blood pressure monitors are available now, allowing you to keep an eye on your health, as well as that of your whole family, in the comfort and privacy of your own home.