What is the connection between anxiety and high blood pressure? Can anxiety cause high blood pressure? How can anxiety disorders be treated to manage high blood pressure. Learn more about the relationship between anxiety and hypertension.

Understanding the Relationship Between Anxiety and High Blood Pressure

Anxiety disorders affect over 40 million adults in the United States each year, and these mental health conditions can have significant physical manifestations, including an increase in blood pressure levels. While anxiety itself is not linked to chronic high blood pressure, both short-term and long-term anxiety can contribute to temporary spikes in blood pressure.

When an individual experiences anxiety, their body enters a “fight-or-flight” mode, activating the sympathetic nervous system. This leads to a rise in adrenaline and cortisol levels, which can result in a temporary increase in blood pressure. However, once the individual has calmed down, their blood pressure levels generally return to normal.

Types of High Blood Pressure

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is classified into two main categories:

Primary Hypertension

Primary hypertension is the most common type and develops without a specific trigger, often due to genetic, environmental, or lifestyle factors.

Secondary Hypertension

Secondary hypertension is caused by an underlying condition, such as issues with the kidneys, heart, or thyroid.

Interestingly, anxiety can also contribute to a specific type of high blood pressure called “white coat hypertension.” This occurs when an individual’s blood pressure spikes in a medical setting, such as a doctor’s office, due to medical anxiety, even though their blood pressure is typically normal.

Symptoms of Anxiety

When an individual experiences anxiety, their fight-or-flight response is activated, leading to a variety of physical symptoms, including:

• Nervousness and restlessness
• Panic or dread
• Rapid heart rate and sweating
• Difficulty breathing and chest pain
• Hyperventilation, shaking, or trembling
• Chills or hot flashes
• Numbness or tingling
• Weakness or fatigue
• Nausea or vomiting
• Diarrhea
• Poor concentration and depersonalization

Treating Anxiety to Manage High Blood Pressure

If an individual experiences frequent episodes of high blood pressure due to anxiety, treating the underlying anxiety disorder can help bring their blood pressure back down to healthier levels. Treatment options for anxiety disorders include:

Psychotherapy

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the gold standard treatment for most anxiety disorders, as it helps individuals address and change problematic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that contribute to their anxiety. Other therapy approaches, such as exposure therapy and trauma-focused therapy, may also be beneficial depending on the specific anxiety disorder.

Medications

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the most commonly prescribed medications for anxiety disorders, as they work to increase serotonin uptake in the brain, which can alleviate anxiety symptoms.

The Bidirectional Relationship Between Anxiety and High Blood Pressure

It’s important to note that the relationship between anxiety and high blood pressure is not one-way. Just as anxiety can lead to temporary spikes in blood pressure, high blood pressure can also contribute to increased anxiety. Some symptoms of high blood pressure, such as shortness of breath, dizziness, and chest pain, can mimic the physical manifestations of anxiety, which can then exacerbate an individual’s anxiety levels.

Furthermore, having a chronic condition like high blood pressure can also lead to the development of mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, individuals with chronic illnesses are more likely to experience these mental health issues.

Conclusion

In summary, while anxiety itself is not a direct cause of chronic high blood pressure, it can contribute to temporary spikes in blood pressure levels. Treating the underlying anxiety disorder through psychotherapy, medication, or a combination of both can help manage these blood pressure fluctuations and improve overall health outcomes. Understanding the bidirectional relationship between anxiety and high blood pressure is crucial for developing effective treatment strategies and improving the well-being of those affected by these conditions.

Can Anxiety Cause High Blood Pressure?

According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America (ADAA), anxiety disorders affect more than 40 million adults every year in the United States. Anxiety can cause a wide range of physical symptoms, including an increase in blood pressure levels.

Although anxiety isn’t linked to chronic high blood pressure, both short-term and chronic anxiety may cause your blood pressure to spike.

In this article, we’ll explore the link between anxiety and high blood pressure and treatment options for both.

Fortunately, anxiety doesn’t cause chronic high blood pressure. However, it can lead to a short-term increase in blood pressure.

When you begin to feel anxious because of a stressful situation, your body enters fight-or-flight mode. This happens due to the activation of your sympathetic nervous system. During fight-or-flight mode, your adrenaline and cortisol levels rise, both of which can lead to an increase in blood pressure.

Although stress and anxiety can cause high blood pressure, it’s only temporary, and levels generally return to normal once you’ve calmed down again.

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is a chronic condition that occurs when blood pressure levels are elevated. Chronic high blood pressure can be quite dangerous and can cause significant damage to the body, especially the brain, heart, kidneys, and eyes.

Hypertension is classified into two categories:

• Primary hypertension. This type of hypertension develops in the absence of a specific trigger and is the most common type of hypertension. Primary hypertension is often thought to develop due to genetic, environmental, or lifestyle causes.
• Secondary hypertension. The cause of this type of hypertension is generally known and is often another underlying condition. Secondary hypertension is often caused by conditions that affect the kidneys, heart, or thyroid.

Interestingly, anxiety can also cause a type of high blood pressure commonly called white coat hypertension. This type happens when your blood pressure is typically normal but spikes in a medical setting, such as a doctor’s office, due to medical anxiety.

Anxiety is a natural response to a perceived threat and is something that all of us experience from time to time. When you feel anxious and your fight-or-flight response is activated, you may experience:

• nervousness
• restlessness
• panic or dread
• rapid heart rate
• sweating
• difficulty breathing
• chest pain
• hyperventilation
• shaking or trembling
• muscle twitches
• chills or hot flashes
• numbness or tingling
• weakness or fatigue
• nausea or vomiting
• diarrhea
• poor concentration
• depersonalization or derealization

In some people, chronic anxiety is due to an underlying anxiety disorder rather than just environmental causes. Anxiety disorders include:

• generalized anxiety
• panic disorder
• specific phobias
• obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
• post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Just like anxiety can cause temporary high blood pressure, high blood pressure can sometimes cause anxiety.

For example, some symptoms of high blood pressure mimic those caused by anxiety, such as:

• shortness of breath
• dizziness
• chest pain
• changes in vision

Experiencing these symptoms or any other symptoms of high blood pressure can lead to an increase in anxiety.

In addition, having a chronic condition like high blood pressure can cause depression and anxiety. In fact, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) states that people who have chronic illnesses are more likely to experience mental health conditions, such as anxiety.

One 2018 study found that up to 51 percent of people with pulmonary arterial hypertension may have anxiety and panic disorders, with many of these individuals going untreated for these conditiƒwas ons.

If you have frequent episodes of high blood pressure that are caused by anxiety, treating the underlying anxiety disorder can help bring your blood pressure back down to healthier levels.

Treatment options that may help include:

Psychotherapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the gold standard treatment for most anxiety disorders. CBT techniques can help address and change problematic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that contribute to anxiety.

Research has shown that CBT can be as effective as medication in treating anxiety disorders.

Other treatment approaches can also be considered, depending on the type and severity of the anxiety disorder. For example, exposure therapy is effective for treating specific phobias, while trauma-focused therapy and interactive therapy such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) can be helpful for conditions like PTSD.

Medications

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the most commonly prescribed medications for anxiety disorders. SSRIs work by increase the uptake of serotonin in the brain, which can reduce the symptoms of anxiety.

According to the research, SSRIs are most effective when combined with psychotherapy.

In some cases, benzodiazepines may be prescribed to provide short-term relief of anxiety symptoms. However, they’re highly addictive and are generally prescribed for short-term use only.

Other

While psychotherapy and medications are effective methods for treating anxiety disorders, lifestyle changes are also important.

Make sure that you are getting enough sleep, eating a balanced diet, and moving your body physically. Relaxation techniques such as meditation, yoga, and massage can also help.

Things you can do to feel less anxious

Whether you have an anxiety disorder or not, everyone can benefit from reducing their daily anxiety levels. Here are some changes that you can make in your daily life to lower your anxiety levels:

• Get enough sleep. Sleep is very important for overall health, and getting enough sleep can make a huge difference in daily anxiety levels. Most people need 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night, so make sure to aim for this.
• Eat a balanced diet. Eating nutritious foods can help support both your physical and mental well-being. Aim to fill your plate with whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins, whenever possible.
• Move your body. Moving your body is important, whether that involves weight training at the gym or taking a walk around the block. Daily exercise and movement can help increase your endorphins and lower stress levels.
• Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of bringing your awareness to the present moment, which is incredibly important when you have anxiety. Meditation is a great mindfulness practice to reduce daily stress and anxiety.

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Medications used to treat anxiety can help reduce overall anxiety levels, which can reduce blood pressure spikes. However, some anxiety treatment options may also cause an increase in blood pressure levels.

One meta-analysis from 2017 investigated the impact of SSRIs and serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) on blood pressure levels. Data from over 13,000 participants was analyzed, and the researchers found that while SSRIs didn’t have any significant impact on blood pressure, SNRIs caused a slight increase in blood pressure levels.

If you have high blood pressure and have recently started taking medication for anxiety, keep track of any changes in your blood pressure levels. This can help your doctor determine if adjustments need to be made to any of your medications.

Treatment for high blood pressure generally involves making a handful of dietary and lifestyle changes. This includes increasing physical activity, maintaining a healthy weight, limiting sodium, and increasing intake of whole foods.

If dietary and lifestyle changes aren’t enough to lower your blood pressure naturally, certain medications may be prescribed, such as:

• beta-blockers (which are also prescribed to reduce symptoms of anxiety)
• diuretics
• ACE inhibitors
• angiotensin II receptor blockers
• calcium channel blockers
• alpha-2 agonists

Generally, if you have high blood pressure and it’s causing an increase in your anxiety, treating the high blood pressure can help to reduce your anxiety symptoms.

Although anxiety can’t cause chronic hypertension, there’s a definite connection between anxiety and blood pressure. Anxiety leads to a natural increase in blood pressure due to the fight-or-flight response, and high blood pressure can sometimes also lead to an increase in anxiety.

If you’re experiencing symptoms of anxiety or high blood pressure that are impacting your daily life, talk with your doctor about which treatments may work for you.

The Scary Links Between Hypertension and Anxiety

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is blood pressure that consistently reads above 140 systolic and/or 90 diastolic. Hypertension is a serious medical problem, and slight increases in blood pressure seem to consistently result in greater risk of heart failure and aneurysms, along with an overall shortened life expectancy.

Hypertension and anxiety have a complex relationship, and most people are unaware of the ways that the two interact. Those with anxiety tend to think hypertension plays more of a role than it does. Those without anxiety tend to think hypertension is less meaningful.

High Blood Pressure is More Common During Anxiety Attacks

Hypertension can affect any individual, and it has several risk factors; however, it is quite common with those suffering from anxiety attacks, as stress and anxiety causes a rapid rise in blood pressure.

It’s important to monitor your hypertension. But it’s also important to trust your doctor, and recognize that:

• Not all hypertension is caused by anxiety.
• Anxiety does not always cause hypertension.

You’re likely aware of the former. Hypertension is a natural part of aging and diet. It’s something you should monitor and try to control, but it’s also something that cannot always be controlled easily.

What you may not be aware of is that anxiety itself – a condition that is associated with extreme stress – doesn’t always cause hypertension, even when you’re anxious. That’s because when a healthy person with normal blood pressure experiences anxiety for an extended period of time (like those with generalized anxiety disorder), the body actually adjusts your blood pressure levels to account for the anxiety. So while anxiety can cause hypertension initially, chronic anxiety is considered unlikely to cause hypertension after the body adjusts to it.

That doesn’t mean that you’re in the clear. Anxiety does cause rapid bursts of high blood pressure during attacks and when you haven’t experienced anxiety for a while. That high blood pressure can potentially be dangerous, although it is almost always harmless. Similarly, the long term effects of stress from anxiety could have an effect on blood pressure years into the future, but it’s difficult to separate that cause from diet and genetics.

Hypertension Causing Anxiety

The bigger question is whether hypertension itself can cause anxiety, and the answer is still somewhat complicated. Hypertension itself doesn’t actually have symptoms. Rather, stress and anxiety that can cause rapid bursts of hypertension have symptoms, and these are often associated with the rise in blood pressure itself. For example:

• Lightheadedness
• Feeling faint
• Headaches
• Dizziness
• Ear ringing
• Weakness
• Rapid heartbeat

All of these symptoms occur during periods of intense anxiety. They’re actually symptoms of hyperventilation as well, which often occurs in those with panic attacks. So while in rare cases it’s possible to experience some of these symptoms as a result of your hypertension, it tends to be fairly uncommon, and in general hypertension simply follows anxiety.

Hypertension Fears Causing Anxiety

It’s also important to note that fear of hypertension can also lead to the development of an anxiety disorder and the overall fear of anxiety. Those who check their blood pressure regularly are extremely prone to this. Blood pressure changes throughout the day, and those who are always checking their blood pressure are bound to find several time periods where their blood pressure is high.

Similarly, those that have high blood pressure already may be more prone to panic attacks, because they have anxiety that their blood pressure might cause them health problems. Any change in the way their heart feels and their anxiety spikes dramatically, possibly leading to further high blood pressure and severe anxiety.

In both of these cases, hypertension is causing anxiety, but more in a secondary manner. Hypertension itself isn’t causing anxiety, but worries about hypertension are.

How to Reduce Anxiety and Hypertension

Hypertension can be very serious, so start by talking to your doctor. Take their recommendations seriously and do everything that they tell you. Your doctor is the only one that can diagnose hypertension, as well as the cause of your hypertension, and give you more information on what you can do to control it.

After that, you need to engage in those activities and try to realize that your hypertension isn’t going to cause any symptoms. As long as you follow the doctor’s advice and keep your heart healthy, your look term outlook is still very good. If your doctor tells you that you do not have hypertension, you need to also realize that hypertension doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a slow process that occurs gradually and can be monitored with yearly doctor visits.

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Sources:

1. Jonas, Bruce S., Peter Franks, and Deborah D. Ingram. Are symptoms of anxiety and depression risk factors for hypertension? Longitudinal evidence from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey I Epidemiologic Follow-up Study. Archives of family medicine 6.1 (1997): 43.
2. Davies, Simon JC, et al. Association of panic disorder and panic attacks with hypertension. The American journal of medicine 107.4 (1999): 310-316.
3. White, William B., and Laurence H. Baker. Episodic hypertension secondary to panic disorder. Archives of internal medicine 146.6 (1986): 1129.

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Lifestyle should be changed in case of hypertension ) – syndrome of increased systolic (upper) pressure up to 140 mm or more and / or diastolic (lower) pressure up to 90 mm or more at rest, says Dr. Peter.

This diagnosis is made when a patient has high blood pressure during two visits to a medical facility a week apart.

In addition, hypertension can be diagnosed by 24-hour or home blood pressure monitoring. In this case, the threshold values ​​​​of blood pressure will be different.

• For daily monitor 24 hour mean pressure 130/80 mm;
• for home monitoring – 135/85 mm.

There is also secondary (symptomatic) arterial hypertension – a manifestation of the pathology of any organ or organ system (for example, the thyroid gland, adrenal glands, kidney vessels).

It is important to measure your blood pressure correctly. There are a number of errors that can lead to distorted results.

Vladimir Pirozhnikov — cardiologist, therapist, doctor of functional diagnostics at the NAKFF medical clinic.

“Unfortunately, hypertension is far from a harmless condition,” cardiologist Vladimir Pirozhnikov told Doctor Peter. – It affects the so-called target organs, which, in particular, include the heart, brain, eyes, kidneys. Of course, the most formidable complications of untreated hypertension are heart attack and stroke, and the task of the doctor and the patient is to prevent these vascular accidents in time.

Dmitry Brovin — head of the therapeutic department of the SOGAZ International Medical Center.

– Uncontrolled and / or untreated hypertension leads to the development of a number of cardiovascular diseases (atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, chronic heart failure, atrial fibrillation), cerebrovascular pathology (ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke, transient ischemic attack), impaired renal function.

An increase in blood pressure can also lead to the development of cognitive dysfunction and dementia.

Ignored hypertension can lead to the development of a number of cardiovascular diseases, including heart attack

org/Person”> Photo: Timur Sharipkulov / UFA1.RU

including:

1. Sleep at least 7 hours a day.

2. Body weight control (BMI less than 30), waist circumference for women less than 88 cm, for men less than 102 cm.

3. Limit salt intake to less than 5 g/day. But giving up salt completely is not worth it.

– It is recommended to increase the consumption of vegetables, fresh fruits, fish, nuts and unsaturated fatty acids (olive oil), low-fat dairy products, reduce the consumption of meat, says cardiologist Pirozhnikov.

4. Refusal to drink alcohol or its strict restriction.

“We recommend less than 14 units of alcohol per week for men and less than 8 units per week for women,” says cardiologist Pirozhnikov. – 1 standard unit in Russia equals 10 grams of pure alcohol, which corresponds, for example, to 250 ml of beer (5% ABV), 100 ml of wine (12% ABV), or 30 ml of strong alcohol (40% ABV).

5. Regular physical exercise acceptable to the patient – walking, cycling, skiing, gardening, swimming.

— The benefits of regular aerobic exercise (at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity dynamic exercise 5-7 days a week) have been proven to be beneficial, says doctor.

6. Smoking cessation recommended due to proven negative effect on mortality.

7. Control of psycho-emotional stress at work and at home by correcting lifestyle (limiting the length of the working day and home loads, reducing the number of night shifts and business trips).

8. Avoid abuse of muscle building supplements and anabolic steroids.

9. For women with arterial hypertension – refusal of oral contraceptives.

“In addition to true arterial hypertension, there is the concept of “false hypertension” or “cardioneurosis”, when anxiety about life and health becomes persistent,” says doctor Vladimir Pirozhnikov. – Most often, false hypertension is a manifestation of anxiety and panic disorders, which is caused by the release of adrenaline and, as a result, a jump in blood pressure. These manifestations are not dangerous, not life-threatening and do not require continuous antihypertensive therapy.

“True hypertension without therapy is characterized by high levels and they are permanent, and do not increase in a few minutes from normal values,” explains the cardiologist. – With true hypertension, the correct dosage of the drug provides the desired long-term result, pressure stabilization occurs soon enough. With false hypertension (cardioneurosis), it is difficult to find a treatment, pressure surges are constant, and drugs often cause adverse reactions.

The doctor notes that one of the most revealing points that help to distinguish false hypertension from true is the well-being of patients.

– Patients with true arterial hypertension often feel well without drugs, which is why it is so difficult to persuade them to permanent antihypertensive therapy, and patients with cardioneurosis feel either bad or worse, no matter what treatment is used, and in this case Psychotherapy, the appointment of neuroleptics and antidepressants can give a good effect, says Vladimir Pirozhnikov.