High Blood Pressure In America, statistics show that 31% of all adults suffer from high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. Someone who is a long-term sufferer of hypertension will may experience severe damage to artery walls, blood vessels, and organs such as the heart, liver and kidney. Heart attacks are common in those who are victims of hypertension. Other dangers of high blood pressure include strokes, brain aneurysms, constricted blood vessels in the kidney and torn or damaged blood vessels in the eyes, sometimes leading to permanent blindness. Long-term hypertension can also cause brain damage and memory loss. With all that said, I think it’s fair to say that cannabis should be considered to treat those with high blood pressure and ultimately save their lives. Unlike many medications from pharmaceutical companies that are commonly prescribed for high blood pressure, marijuana has little - if any - negative side effects. Many medications prescribed for hypertension, such as beta blockers, are dangerous to use on people with heart problems. Excuse me, but most people with hypertension also will have heart problems. Yet these drugs are still prescribed. While further research still needs to be conducted, initial studies and research groups indicate that cannabis may be a perfectly viable option for treating hypertension. In tests conducted on lab animals, researchers determined that marijuana opened up the blood vessels in those animals with high blood pressure, thus lowering and reducing the hypertension. Other research on humans has shown that upon smoking or vaporizing cannabis, the heart rate speeds up at first, before slowing down with activity. Generally it takes about 5 - 10 minutes for a person’s heart rate to slow after smoking marijuana. Those who have studies the effects and causes of hypertension, know that some of the main contributing factors to high blood pressure are obesity, anxiety and insomnia. In all three of those cases, marijuana has been shown to be a viable medication. By treating those symptoms, marijuana helps to eliminate - or at least reduce - hypertension in the first place. If you think you may be suffering from high blood pressure and don’t want the dangers associated with pharmaceutical medications prescribed for that, then seriously consider talking to a 420-friendly doctor about using cannabis to treat hypertension.