Hypoten­sion or low blood pres­sure is caused by loss of vas­cu­lar tone / ten­sion and usu­al­ly results from one or more of the fol­low­ing con­di­tions.  See our Hypoten­sion Mod­el Cause for more Infor­ma­tion

• Insuf­fi­cient oxy­gen to arte­r­i­al smooth mus­cle to main­tain tone
• Dys­func­tion of brain area that con­trols Blood Pres­sure
• Inhi­bi­tion of vagus nerve
• Tox­ic Shock where one or more tox­ins dis­rupt tis­sue oxy­gen deliv­ery
• Trau­mat­ic Shock where one or more events dis­able metab­o­lism
• Acute dehy­dra­tion which results in blood vol­ume loss or excess salts which pre­vent oxy­gen sol­u­bil­i­ty and oxy­gen deliv­ery
• Severe blood loss

The body uses two mechan­i­cal process­es to con­trol blood pres­sure:

• Heart Rate and Force to force blood to move blood;
• Vas­cu­lar tone to direct blood where need­ed through vas­cu­lar sys­tem.

Hypoten­sion from a weak heart is rare because usu­al­ly diag­nosed as heart dis­ease. Low blood pres­sure usu­al­ly results from fail­ure in vas­cu­lar tone main­te­nance.

Defi­cient oxy­gen deliv­ery to parts of the brain can occur with­out clin­i­cal “hypoten­sion”.

Stress and Flow

Arte­r­i­al smooth mus­cle ten­sion lim­its blood flow, and pre­serves pres­sure. Squeez­ing arter­ies directs blood where need­ed by restrict­ing flow to areas where it is not need­ed.

Weak arte­r­i­al tone inhibits the body’s abil­i­ty to reg­u­late blood flow. Like­wise, sys­temic hypox­ia, that trig­gers an entire-body vasodila­tor reflex, can also result in hypoten­sion.

Break­down in the vas­cu­lar tone is the dom­i­nant under­ly­ing cause of low blood pres­sure. Loss of vas­cu­lar tone caus­es lim­its blood and oxy­gen deliv­ery to high demand areas in the body.

Flow-con­trol fail­ure caus­es poor­ly sup­plied tis­sues under-per­form, exhib­it func­tion­al weak­ness pro­duce excess lac­tic acid. This tran­sient under-per­for­mance results in a wide range of syn­dromes and symp­toms rang­ing from benign to severe and degen­er­a­tion.

Hypoten­sion is both a cause and an effect of vas­cu­lar tone loss. When tis­sues that con­trol oxy­gen deliv­ery do not get enough oxy­gen. This is pos­i­tive feed­back.

It evi­dences a durable and recur­ring pat­tern which lim­its stress adap­tive respons­es.

Physiology Models

Hypoten­sion is weak­ly defined in most med­ical lit­er­a­ture. It gen­er­al­ly reflects the inabil­i­ty of the body to reg­u­late blood flow due to an absence of vas­cu­lar tone. Car­diac insuf­fi­cien­cy is out­side this descrip­tion.

Lack of oxy­gen to Brain Con­trols

Dam­age or trau­ma to the back of the head can estab­lish con­di­tions which inhib­it sig­nal gen­er­a­tion that pre­vents prop­er blood flow.Hypoxic trau­ma estab­lish­es durable blood flow reduc­tion because of cap­il­lary swelling at the root of the vagus nerve.See von Ardenne.Inhib­it­ed blood flow pre­vents nor­mal reg­u­la­tion of sym­pa­thet­ic ner­vous sys­tem, includ­ing blood pres­sure. Leads to sympathetic/parasympathetic imbal­ances.

Auto­nom­ic Ner­vous Sys­tem Imbal­ance

See Vaso­va­gal Syn­cope. Trau­ma or stress that that exceeds the cur­rent adap­tive range of the auto­nom­ic ner­vous sys­tem caus­es an imbal­ance where either the sym­pa­thet­ic or parasym­pa­thet­ic branch of the auto­nom­ic ner­vous sys­tem dominates.Sympathetic dom­i­nance pro­duces hyper­ten­sion, high blood pres­sure, while parasym­pa­thet­ic pro­duces hypoten­sion, low blood pressure.Chronic stress tends to cre­ate a durable and usu­al­ly recur­rent pat­tern of sym­pa­thet­ic or parasym­pa­thet­ic dominance.Episode recur­rence reflects the nor­mal­ly pro­gres­sive deple­tion meta­bol­ic agents which enable balance.Principle agents which sup­port auto­nom­ic bal­ance: All B vit­a­mins; Group 16 ele­ments, Oxy­gen, Sul­fur, Sele­ni­um Agents which inhib­it auto­nom­ic bal­ance: All tox­ins which inhib­it tis­sue oxy­gen deliv­ery (cause hypox­ia); Stress of any sort which exceeds cur­rent autoreg­u­la­to­ry per­for­mance of the ANS which cre­ate con­di­tions which lock metab­o­lism into dys­reg­u­la­tion.

Lack of oxy­gen to artery smooth mus­cles

Sec­ondary hypox­ia is a med­ical­ly unrec­og­nized con­di­tion. While vas­cu­lar­ized tis­sue receives oxy­gen from cap­il­lary net­works, non-vas­cu­lar­ized tis­sue is sup­port­ed by sol­u­bil­i­ty and dif­fu­sion process­es in blood plas­ma.Sec­ondary hypox­ia occurs when nutri­ent and oxy­gen deliv­ery from plas­ma fails to meet the demands from non-vas­cu­lar­ized tis­sue.  Smooth mus­cle cells in arter­ies are non-vas­cu­lar and receive oxy­gen from plasma.When plas­ma oxy­gen con­cen­tra­tion decreas­es below the vas­cu­lar tone thresh­old, the smooth mus­cles can­not squeeze, result­ing in hypoten­sion.  Vas­cu­lar dila­tion of a known effect of hypox­ia except in the lungs, which respond with vaso­con­stric­tion, which fur­ther lim­its oxy­gen absorp­tion.

Shock Cas­cade

Shock is the sequence of events which leads to sys­temic fail­ure. It reflects the process of meta­bol­ic break­down result­ing from pro­gres­sive hypox­ia occur­ring when the effects described above exceed dura­bil­i­ty.

Hypoxic Degeneration

Loss of oxy­gen to non-vas­cu­lar­ized tis­sue enables degeneration.Degeneration non-vas­cu­lar tis­sue nor­mal­ly indi­cates durable decrease in sec­ondary oxy­gen deliv­ery. oxy­gen and like­ly nutri­ents to the degen­er­ate tis­sue.

Degen­er­a­tion of non vas­cu­lar tis­sue at sol­u­ble oxy­gen trans­port is degen­er­ate to. This is a typ­i­cal cause of many sorts of degen­er­a­tion:

• Decreas­ing Vision (lens of eye)
• Vas­cu­lar (arte­rioscle­ro­sis)
• Con­nec­tive tis­sue (car­ti­lage, lig­a­ments & ten­dons)