• Being seriously overweight or obese. It stands to reason that the greater your body mass, the harder your heart will have to work to pump blood around you. Consequently, there is an increase in pressure on the arterial walls as more blood is produced to supply the necessary oxygen and nutrients throughout your larger-than-normal body mass.

• Sleep apnea (brief periods when you stop breathing while sleeping) is also considered a contributing factor to high blood pressure and is something that overweight people are particularly susceptible to.

• Activity levels can also be a contributing factor. If you’re relatively inactive or don’t exercise at all, you tend to increase your heart rate, which means your heart works harder to pump blood around your body. And, of course, it follows that if you’re completely sedentary and don’t exercise, this is also likely to exacerbate your weight problems.

• Family history or genetics. It is a fact that hypertension can often run in particular families, and the condition is seen generation after generation. If you therefore have a family history of hypertension, it is quite likely that you have a similar problem.

• Uses of tobacco. Certain chemicals in cigarettes and tobacco itself can damage the walls of your blood vessels, increasing the work your heart has to do to pump blood around your body.

• Stress can be a big contributing factor when it comes to high blood pressure.

• Sodium intake. Consuming too much sodium can lead to increased fluid retention, which in turn leads to increased blood pressure.

• Potassium intake. Considering excessively low levels of potassium can result in high sodium levels in the body’s cells because potassium and sodium seek a natural balance in those cells. Therefore, if one is on the rise, their characteristics are more likely to be seen.

• Excessive alcohol consumption can increase the risk of heart problems, especially if this excessive consumption is continued for a significant period of time.

Secondary hypertension problems are usually caused by pre-existing medical conditions like renal stenosis or some other form of kidney disease or heart problems like coarctation of the aorta.

In the case of secondary hypertension, therefore, the medical condition that has caused your high blood pressure is likely already being treated, and part of that treatment is likely to focus on treating your blood pressure problems.

While this cannot be said to lessen the severity of high blood pressure problems caused by secondary hypertension, it does suggest that these problems are much more likely to be effectively controlled. After all, as has been suggested, a primary problem with hypertension is the fact that many millions of people have high blood pressure and are not even aware of it.

Obviously, this is not the case when someone has secondary hypertension as a result of another serious medical condition. Therefore, it is very likely that your blood pressure problem is under control.