You suffer from high blood pressure
A high blood pressure diagnosis could increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, or heart disease. If you don’t lower those numbers, it could damage your arteries and cause plaque to build up around your artery walls down the line, which slowly blocks blood flow. When your blood is constantly pushing against your blood vessels at a high rate, it forces your heart and blood vessels to work harder and less efficiently.
“People intuitively think that they’re going to know that they have high blood pressure, but a lot of times that only comes when the blood pressure is remarkably high,” says Lawrence Phillips, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Medicine and director of the Nuclear Cardiology Laboratory at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. “I encourage everyone to get their blood pressure checked because blood pressure is one of the most modifiable risks.”
