What are the risk factors for hypertension?

Age is one of the main risk factors for heart disease. As we age, our risk of having high blood pressure significantly goes up. 60% or 50 to 60% adults over the age of 60 have high blood pressure compared to only 30% below the age of 60. So, obviously as we age, because our risk is significantly to have high blood pressure, which we should be more cognizant of this factor and get a check more often.

If you're talking about the risk factors for high blood pressure. We have kind of a wide blood pressure to what we call primary hypertension and secondary hypertension. Primary hypertension is [when] you don't have a disease in the body that is causing the high blood pressure. Like say if you have a kidney tumor, or if you are taking medications like oral contraceptives pills or pain medications like, like nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory's. If you have thyroid problems, that is called secondary hypertension. But the primary hypertension is the most common type of hypertension it affects about 90% of the people with high blood pressure have primary hypertension which is caused by our age, obesity is one of the main risk factors, genetics do factor in if somebody in the family has high blood pressure, you have a higher tendency to get the high blood pressure. Dietary habits, sedentary lifestyle, alcohol consumption is one of the biggest risk factors, tobacco abuse. If somebody already has diabetes and hyperlipidemia (high cholesterol) you have a higher tendency to develop high blood pressure because that can harden the arteries and in turn increase the pressure in the arteries.