High blood pressure?

Question

if a teen girl has high blood pressure, what exactly does that mean? someone told me if you skip meals and have high blood pressure, you could faint or even have a seizure. is that true? if you have high blood pressure and faint, could it cause brain damage? if you have high blood pressure and have a seizure could that cause brain damage?
remember we're talking about a teen girl (like thirteen-fourteen years old)

the teen girl that i know who has HB is quite thin and doesnt need to loose weight at all! so what do you think caused the HB? how should she treat it?

Answer 1

It is true that VERY high blood pressure can cause fainting, seizures, confusion, bleeding in the brain and death. However most people do not have blood pressures that high.

If a teen girl has high blood pressure (BP) that means when the doctor or nurse (or blood pressure machine) measures her blood pressure it is greater than 140/90mmHg. Health care people call this Hypertension. It means that for some reason the heart is pumping blood into the arteries and causing high pressures. It could be due to many things (see the wiki page).

If you skip meals and have high BP you could faint or have a seizure - yes this is true. Either low blood sugar (from skipping the meal) or high BP affecting the brain (hypertensive encephalopathy) could cause faints and fits.

Faints and fits can cause brain damage - yes, this is true.

HOWEVER - all of this is unlikely. Most people who have high blood pressure take a long while to develop brain illness from this (hypertensive encephalopathy) and in most cases high BP causes illness and injury through long term increased wear and tear on the arteries leading to heart disease or strokes.

If a teen girl has high BP she should see her family doctor. If it is truly high BP and does not respond to simple measures (like cutting salt out of her diet) then she might require further investigation and treatment. There are diseases of the kidney or diseases of the blood vessels which could cause high BP and it would be better if they were found and treated early.

Answer 2

What is your B/P? A reading of 140/90 or higher for five days in a row is borderline. Skipping meals has nothing to do with high b/p. Blood pressure is affected by things like heart rate and the constriction of your blood vessels. This can be caused by caffiene, nictotine, stress, and diet pills as a few examples. Get your blood pressure checked, avoid the forementioned items, and calm down.

Answer 3

Dieting and losing weight helps control high blood pressure.