Psychological and Physical Features in Hypertension

Abstract

Neuroendocrine hypertension can be pure, i.e., when only one etiological factor predominates, or the causes can be intertwined, hence it is called essential or mixed endogenous hypertension, which can be either hypertonia or hyperpiosis, depending in general on the time of evolution of the disease. Essential hypertension is, therefore, a neuroendocrine hypertension that encompasses psychogenic, diencephalic, pituitary (adrenal), renal and arteriosclerotic causes; all of them are intertwined and enlarged, although discretely, but continuously, acting together and in constant intensity, becoming significant to produce a permanent arteriolar vasoconstriction and leading, finally, to an irreversible vascular lesion, that is, to arteriosclerotic hyperpiesis. It is the concept of multiple causes, resulting from an algebraic equation in which many forces operate in an associative character. However, in essential hypertension, the most important initial etiological factor is psychogenic, not excluding, of course, the genetic factors that determine vascular hyperactivity, enzymes and stabilizing hormones. In neuroendocrine hypertension, our causes are almost always intertwined: it is the so-called essential hypertension; but sometimes we can distinguish a single cause or the predominance of one of them, and when this happens, neuroendocrine hypertension is called etiological. Psychogenic hypertension: in order to understand the relationship between psychic and organic states, we will remember that intense reactions, starting from the cerebral cortex, follow a path passing through the thalamus (corticothalamic projection) and the mammillary bodies (mammalothalamic pathway).