Can Being Overweight Cause High Blood Pressure

Your physician states that you have a creeping blood pressure. You question- does being overweight cause high blood pressure? The truthful reply to this is yes and the relationship is far closer than most individuals could have thought. Extra weight does not simply lie around on your body. It actively strains your heart, alters how your kidneys function, and modifies how your blood vessels function. Realizing this relationship is not a question of guilt or blame. It is knowing what is going on in your body to enable you to make a sound decision on what to do next.

Our board certified bariatric doctor at BodEvolve Bariatric has assisted thousands of patients to treat obesity-related diseases such as high blood pressure. Everything you should know is disaggregated in this blog.

How Overweight and High Blood Pressure Are Directly Connected

The connection between high blood pressure and being overweight is not a coincidence, but rather biological. The changes that occur in your body when you have excess body fat especially around the abdomen will increase blood pressure in the long run.

To begin with, fat tissue needs additional oxygen and nutrients, and it implies that your heart will have to supply more blood with more blood vessels. This augmented cardiac output by itself raises artery wall pressure.

Second, an overweight body leads to an increase of sodium and water retention by the kidneys. The retention of sodium raises blood volume pushing the blood pressure to higher levels. Third, the fat (adipose) tissue secretes inflammatory chemicals and hormones (leptin and angiotensin) which directly lead to constricting and hardening of blood vessels. Rigid, constricted blood vessels imply that blood does not have much room to circulate freely, thus elevating systolic and diastolic values.

The outcome is a vicious cycle: increasing weight causes pressure to rise, and untreated hypertension puts additional pressure on the heart, making it more vulnerable to developing a heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, and loss of vision. Early awareness of these physical symptoms of being overweight can be the key to reversal and permanent damage to the organs.

Can Being Overweight Cause High Blood Pressure Even Without Other Risk Factors?

One of the most frequent questions patients pose to us is: can being overweight lead to high blood pressure despite relative health in eating, absence of smoking and family history of heart disease? The answer is yes.

Weight is a risk factor on its own in hypertension. Studies have always indicated that in each 10 pounds of excess weight, the blood pressure increases by about 4 to 5 mmHg systolic. An individual with 40 additional pounds can have a 15 to 20 point increase in systolic due to weight alone – sufficient to shift him out of normal into Stage 1 or Stage 2 hypertension range without any other factor involved.

This is the reason why excess weight is not only a cosmetic issue. It is heart disease medicine. At BodEvolve, Dr. Clayton Frenzel, triple board-certified, dual fellowship-trained bariatric and cosmetic surgeon, and Dr. Brian Holt treat obesity as a medical condition and not a failure in lifestyle. Their holistic bariatric surgeries are aimed at treating the cause as opposed to containing the symptoms.

The Role of Overweight and High Blood Pressure in Long-Term Health Risks

The risk of both overweight and high blood pressure is more dangerous than either of the two conditions. Hypertension is even referred to as the silent killer since it leaves damage over a number of years before the symptoms are observed. When that hypertension is caused by excess weight, you are:

1. Heart Disease: With continued high pressure, the heart muscle becomes thick and poses a risk of heart failure and coronary artery disease.
2. Stroke: Persistently high blood pressure makes the walls of arteries weak and increases the risk of stroke in a dramatic way.
3. Kidney Damage: High pressure leaves kidney tissue scarred in the long run which may result in chronic kidney disease.
4. Sleep Apnea: Obese sleep apnea increases blood pressure at night further, forming a vicious cycle. Learn more about how these health issues with being overweight increase one another.

The positive thing is that the blood pressure is among the conditions that are most sensitive to weight loss. Research indicates that even a 5 to 10 percent reduction in body weight would significantly lower blood pressure. Hypertension resolves or greatly improves in most patients who undergo bariatric surgery in months after the surgery.

How Weight Loss Surgery Addresses High Blood Pressure at the Root

In case you have attempted to lose weight through diet and exercise but have not been successful in the long term, then bariatric surgery is perhaps the best medical procedure that you can use. BodEvolve provides all the procedures that have been proven:

• Gastric Sleeve Surgery involves the removal of about 75% of the stomach, which significantly lowers the levels of hunger hormones and food. The majority of patients lose between 60 and 70 percent of excess weight, and blood pressure is usually reported to improve in a few weeks.
• Gastric Bypass Surgery involves formation of a small stomach pouch and diversionary of the digestive tract. It provides 70-80% overweight reduction and is especially efficient in patients with co-morbid diabetes and high blood pressure.
• Duodenal Switch and SADI-S are potent by the patients who may require the maximum metabolic effectiveness, i.e., severe cases of obesity.
• In case you underwent weight loss surgery before and gained weight back, revision weight loss surgery will revert your outcome and re-address associated health problems such as high blood pressure.

You can learn what will happen to you and what patients have actually achieved through bariatric surgery before and after, or get to know about our physician-supervised path to meaningful weight loss that also impacts blood pressure.

Take Control Before High Blood Pressure Takes Control of You

Therefore, does being overweight cause high blood pressure? Yes, and this occurs by numerous direct biological mechanisms, which deteriorate with age without treatment. However, excess weight hypertension is among the most reversible conditions in the event that significant weight loss is attained. High blood pressure is not a life-long condition you must accept.

Our surgeon, Dr. Frenzel, and Dr. Brian Holt are both board-certified surgeons who have carried out more than 14,000 successful surgeries, assisting patients throughout the DFW not only to lose weight, but also to undo the medical conditions that accompanied it.