Are your blood vessels contracting? Your heart pumping harder? Faster? Is there more blood in you than normal???!
What physically is happening to increase the pressure in the pipes?
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>Are your blood vessels contracting? Your heart pumping harder? Faster? Is there more blood in you than normal???!
All are possible depending on the underlying cause. Blood pressure is the result (and high or low, can in turn be a cause to other things).
>Are your blood vessels contracting? Your heart pumping harder? Faster? Is there more blood in you than normal???!
All of the above can raise your blood pressure
Blood pressue is simply a measure of the pressure inside a pipe (in this case your arteries). You can affect the pressure by making the pipes smaller, pumping more blood through it, increasing the force of the pump that is pumping things.
In the short term, like when you are stressed or exercising, its usually a combination of the heart beating faster and harder and your blood vessels constricting.
Over the long term, high blood pressure is generally caused by buildup of plaque inside the vessels, narrowing their diameter. The decreased diametre of the blood vessel leads to a higher pressure travelling through it due to Boyles law
Yep thats pretty much it.
So there’s two ways either it’s a physiological or pathological response. In physiological your vessels contract, heart rate goes up and you retain sodium which sucks water into the vessels. In pathological usually the vessels are stiff with plaques from cholesterol and dead white blood cells so the arteries can never relax. The kidneys are also often damaged and can’t effectively filter the blood. Due to other cormorbidities such as heart disease you then can’t overcome this by reducing sodium and heart rate and your blood pressure is persistently raised which then puts more strain on the system. This is why you’re more likely to develop a stroke and heart attack or angina with raised blood pressure and why it should be controlled.
When your blood pressure goes up, it means that the force of the blood against the walls of your arteries has increased. This is usually due to your heart pumping blood faster and more forcefully to meet the body’s increased demands, such as during exercise. As the heart pumps, it sends more blood into the arteries, which causes the arteries to widen in order to accommodate the increased pressure. This can cause an increase in blood pressure.
Yes. Blood pressure is remarkably complicated – all of the things you’ve listed can increase blood pressure.
An example: When you exercise, your heart rate increases to increase blood flow to the body. An increase in flow leads to an increase in pressure. However the body has lots of regulatory systems to prevent blood pressure from getting too high. In this case of exercise, blood vessels dilate to accommodate the increased blood flow and keep blood pressure at it’s normal value (assuming you’re healthy).
On short timescales, your blood pressure can spike from things like exercise or being scared. On long time scales, blood pressure can be elevated by a long list of disease states, but a relatively easy to think about is consuming too much salt in your diet. When you have a lot of salt in your body, water tends to stick around. Having all of that extra fluid increases blood volume, which increases pressure.
However, what specific thing drives a given change in blood pressure is an ongoing area of research. When heart rate, contractile strength of the heart, and blood vessel constriction/dilation are all happening simultaneously, it quite challenging to disentangle what’s causing what.
Source: I have a PhD in CV physiology, and have done a lot of research on CV fluid mechanics
You’re blood pressure is controlled by 3 things. (Heart rate+stroke volume) x systemic vascular resistance. So the answer is all 3 things can change your blood pressure. Heart rate and stroke volume have a smaller effect on your blood pressure and systemic vascular resistance plays the biggest roll.
Just noticed my BP was up really high. Got worried about it until I realized that after I took my shirt off in a cold room, I was almost shivering. will try again once I warm up but that does explain why it was like perfect after a warm bath the other day.
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