Hypertension in young adults: Should youngsters worry about their blood pressure? Read what expert says

We must protect our young generation from this disease by educating them about its causes, preventive methods, and treatment in order to ensure a healthy future society. 

High blood pressure mostly affects the old age group, usually after 40 years; in old age, around 90% of cases do not know the cause. It is labelled as idiopathic in medical science. Nowadays, many young people have high blood pressure.

Compared to the old age group, young people have high blood pressure due to various causes, such as kidney disease, blockage of the artery supplying the kidney, thyroid disease, diabetes, excessive growth hormone secretion, etc. Sometimes, congenital narrowing of the aorta, called coarctation of the aorta, may cause high BP in children and young people.

Lifestyle changes in a young age, such as obesity, sedentary lifestyle, lack of exercise, sitting most of the time, sticking to a laptop mobile, smoking, taking fast food, lack of sleep, alcohol ingestion, stress in a job, fast life, and irregular food habits, are few prominent causes of increased incidence of high blood pressure in young age nowadays.

High blood pressure from a young age, in the long term, may lead to very dreadful diseases like heart attack, brain stroke, renal failure, heart failure, blindness etc., over a period. so we have to worry about it, we have to control it by lifestyle changes and medication aggressively.

We must have regular health checkups, check blood pressure, find out the treatable cause of high blood pressure, and act accordingly. We have to change our lifestyle by adopting a healthy diet, doing regular exercise, and stopping chewing tobacco and smoking. As far as possible, we must decrease our stress levels at work by adopting yoga and different exercises in our daily activities.

We have to save our young generation from this by making them aware of this disease, its cause, its preventive measures, and its treatment so that we have a good, healthy future in society.

-          Dr. Mahesh Prasad Agrawala-Consultant Interventional cardiologist, Manipal Hospital, Bhubaneswar