1. Home
2. Blog
3. Does-high-cholesterol-cause-high-blood-pressure

Does High Cholesterol Cause High Blood Pressure

<< Go back to blog

Any time something narrows and has less space available in it there’s going to be more pressure if that space is filled. Blood is essential to your body, and there’s a LOT of it moving through arteries of your body at all times. If there’s less room in there for the fluid of life to move then pressure builds up and that is what leads to hypertension, or high blood pressure as it is more commonly called. It’s not the only factor, but high cholesterol can contribute to high blood pressure and the risk of an embolism is increased by either problem. Does high cholesterol cause high blood pressure? It can be a part of it. 

Small tears in artery walls can make cholesterol plaques build up more readily, and this contributes to hardening arteries and more hypertension so in a sense it becomes a bit of a negative feedback loop. More cholesterol buildup, more high blood pressure. The higher your blood pressure, the more likely you are to have higher cholesterol too. This is called endothelial damage 

 High cholesterol and blood pressure don’t go well together, and so if you have diet and lifestyle choices along with a genetic predisposition for high cholesterol then you will need to be more vigilant. People who are older are going to be more at risk for this, and the slowed metabolism that you have at this stage of your life also contributes to being more susceptible to cholesterol buildup. If you already have hypertension it may become worse.

One Leading to the Other  

We’ve answered for does high cholesterol cause high blood pressure, and we did talk about that negative feedback loop and talk more about how the connection between high cholesterol and blood pressure really works. Cholesterol interferes with how blood vessels contract and release, and when they do too much of one and not enough of the other this also works to increase blood pressure. So much so that having high cholesterol is a very reliable indicator that you’ll have high blood pressure too in the near future.

This is especially true for high LDL cholesterol levels, the ‘bad’ cholesterol as it is known and the one that is very bad for your health. Studies have shown that men who proportionately way more LDL than HDL (good) cholesterol are much more likely to develop hypertension within 15 years of the imbalance beginning, and the odds for men with extremely high cholesterol and an unhealthy HDL / LDL ratio were as high as 54% for having high blood pressure when older.

This applies to women too, and that emphasizes the answer for does high cholesterol cause high blood pressure. Cutting back on the amount of fatty foods that promote high cholesterol and reducing sodium and sugar intake can be a roundabout way of improving the results you get from a blood pressure lowering medication like Coversyl. Along with the added protection against atherosclerosis that can mean healthier arteries when you reduce your cholesterol intake.

<< Go back to blog