If you live or work in a high stress environment, you may well increase the risk of hypertension and high blood pressure, which can cause a multitude of negative effects to overall physical health.

Hypertension occurs when the blood vessels constrict due to a permanent reduction in the cross-sectional area as a result of atheroma deposits, or a temporary narrowing due to an increase in hormonal production. When the blood pressure is too high, you may experience headaches or dizziness, but, in many cases, there will be no symptoms.

And that is the danger because high blood pressure over a long period can lead to a stroke that will permanently damage the heart. So before this happens, it is important to figure out ways to either get rid of the stress factors your daily life. Or, you must find ways to cope with the effects of the stress before they cause cardiac damage that is irreparable.

There are usually ways to either avoid or mitigate stress and its effects, but if you already have high blood pressure, see a doctor to find out what can be done to bring it down either by a change in lifestyle or by medication, or both. It is important to appreciate that you can help yourself to reduce stress, improve your health and lower blood pressure in a number of ways.

You need to carefully watch your diet to avoid foods that are high in salt. Make sure to exercise on a regular basis to help to get the blood flowing through the arterial system and that will also help to keep to a healthy weight. Finally, ensure that in addition to an optimum body weight that the cholesterol is within recommended limits — currently under five, but it’s even better if it’s under four.

Other than these physical changes, the most important factor for your health is to manage stress levels. You must learn not to concern yourself with things beyond your control, i.e., those issues that are greater than the resources available to you to effectively combat them. If you fail to understand this vital point, you will always suffer from the effects of stress — and these can, sometimes, be fatal.

Stress indicates that you have lost control over a particular situation, at work or at home. It means that your mind, and inevitably your body, has recognised and accepted that you do not have the means available to fight the problem. It could be physical or mental, but probably be the latter as the former is usually of a short duration. A typical example might be bullying at work by a boss who feels the need to intimidate you every working day and from whom there is no obvious escape other than to change jobs.

Another frequent problem that inevitably causes stress is financial. If your expenditure exceeds your current income and you can find no way to reduce the first or increase the second. In other words, the resources available are insufficient to meet or fight the challenges. The body recognises this as a serious challenge to your health, safety or security, and automatically increases the production of cortisol — the so-called ‘stress hormone’.

This will increase both the heart rate and blood pressure to meet the perceived challenge, but unfortunately, can do neither because in most cases the challenge is not of a physical nature. The body is put in a high state of alert to fight an intruder, when there is none, and the result is stress. In instances where this happens on a frequent or prolonged basis, the body will suffer damage.

With 2016 upon you, be aware of factors in your life that can cause you to feel stress and avoid those situations and people. Life is too short.

Key points

Prolonged stress = hypertension = danger to health

Imperative = avoidance or mitigation of known stressors

— The writer is CEO of an international stress management consultancy and author of Show Stress Who’s Boss!.