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How Does Hypertension Affect Your Kidneys?
Roughly half of American adults have high blood pressure (hypertension), a chronic condition that can have far-reaching impacts on your health. Though most people know high blood pressure increases your risk of heart attack and stroke, far fewer understand the connection between hypertension and their kidney health.
As a leading provider of state-of-the-art kidney care, nephrologist Chadi Saad, MD, helps patients at Nephrocare MD LLC, understand the effect blood pressure can have on their kidneys, providing patient-centered care to reduce risks and protect kidney health.
Here, Dr. Saad and his team provide a quick overview of the link between blood pressure and kidney health, so you can make informed, empowered decisions.
Hypertension basics
Blood pressure is a surprisingly simple medical concept: It’s the force or pressure your blood exerts on the walls of your blood vessels as it circulates throughout your body.
Hypertension is associated with several risk factors, including:
- Smoking
- Being overweight or obese
- Excessive alcohol consumption
- Unhealthy diet
- Sedentary lifestyle
- Older age
Hypertension is also associated with some underlying medical issues, like diabetes, sleep apnea, or high cholesterol.
Although untreated hypertension can be dangerous — even deadly — it rarely causes symptoms on its own. That’s why it’s so important to have your blood pressure measured regularly, especially if you have risk factors for high blood pressure.
Your body’s organs and tissues are designed to withstand a certain range of pressure, but when blood pressure is too high, it can cause damage to your tissues or organs (including the kidneys) and even impair the blood vessels themselves.
High blood pressure and your kidneys
Your kidneys play a vital role in keeping you healthy, filtering wastes and excess fluid from your blood and returning “clean” blood to circulation. Your kidneys also help maintain optimal levels of electrolytes and, interestingly, play a role in regulating blood pressure, too.
To perform all these critical tasks, your kidneys feature a network of very tiny blood vessels called glomeruli that perform the actual filtering processes. When blood pressure is high, the increased pressure inside the glomeruli can hinder the filtering process and even damage the tiny vessels, scarring them and thickening them so they’re unable to filter your blood.
High blood pressure affects the larger vessels that supply the kidneys with oxygen-rich blood, making it even harder for your kidneys to work the way they should. Over time, the combined damage can actually increase your blood pressure further, creating a dangerous cycle that’s difficult to control.
When kidney function continues to be impaired, it can lead to chronic kidney disease (CKD), a long-term disease that may progress to kidney failure and a need for dialysis and organ transplant.
Managing hypertension for better kidney health
Dr. Saad focuses on individualized therapies for patients with hypertension, tailoring care to suit each patient’s individual risk factors and health profile. Treatment plans begin with healthy lifestyle changes to increase exercise, maintain healthier eating habits, lose excess pounds, manage stress, and quit smoking.
Sometimes, lifestyle modifications are sufficient for keeping blood pressure in a healthy range. But other times, patients may benefit from medications to help lower blood pressure and support optimal kidney function.
Dr. Saad also offers remote monitoring services that enable you to check your blood pressure on a regular basis, so he can adjust your therapy for maximum benefits. For more severe hypertension that doesn’t respond to these therapies, he may suggest a minimally invasive treatment to block nerve signals contributing to high blood pressure.
If you have high blood pressure, having a kidney evaluation is a good way to prevent problems before they occur. To learn more, call 313-960-6605 or book an appointment online with Dr. Saad and the team at Nephrocare MD LLC in Dearborn, Michigan, today.