Why is high blood pressure so common?

Presenter - But starting off let's have a little discussion first of all about high blood pressure, or hypertension – why is it so common?

Martin - That's a very very good question and the honest answer is no one really knows, because the basic cause of high blood pressure is still not known. Even though an awful lot of research has been done into the subject, in fact probably about 90% of people with high blood pressure probably still don't know why they have high blood pressure, and basically we tend to call that essential hypertension, which is a sort of strange way of saying we really haven't got a clue why these people have got high blood pressure. The other sort of 10% we sometimes do know because it's linked with some other condition, but it is one of those hot topics that people have been working on for many many years and we still don't really understand why it's such a common problem. It's almost like the barometer of your blood pressure is set in the wrong way, it's set too high

Presenter - Right, so your body's just gone a bit off track?

Martin - Yes exactly. It's strange because you do have some patients, or we see the occasional patient and you almost wonder if their body is trying to tell us something

Presenter - Right so there might be an underlying problem that you can't quite work out exactly what that is either?

Martin - That's exactly right, yes absolutely. Sometimes obviously there are links with lifestyle etc which perhaps we can talk about in a little while

Presenter - Yes

Martin - But 9 times out of 10 somebody with high blood pressure, you just can't put your finger on why they have it or why it's so common really