Dr. Sanjay Gupta

If you've had too much salt, your blood pressure will go up.

If you're producing stress hormones, they cause our blood vessels to constrict.

So your area has gotten less and the blood pressure will go up.

That is not a disease.

That is just a response to the body in response to the things that that person is doing.

Why is blood pressure important?

Well, I'd liken it to a little bit like when you're trying to water your plants.

you have to have a certain amount of pressure in your hosepipe to get the water to that plant.

If you don't have enough of a pressure, the plant doesn't get the water and dies.

If you have too much pressure, you damage the plant.

And this is exactly how blood pressure works.

It has to be within a certain range.

If it's too low, then the patient's organs don't get the blood.

and those organs suffer.

And if it's too high, you damage those organs by damaging the blood vessels.

And that is why blood pressure is important.

So you don't want it to be too low and you don't want it to be too high because you risk damaging the blood vessels.

And therefore, those blood vessels then heal by clotting off, which means less blood gets to those organs.

Absolutely.

And you can see this very starkly when you're watching Olympians, for example, weightlifters.