High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is usually thought of as an adult health issue. But doctors are now raising serious concerns after a study published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health in November 2025 showed that rates of high blood pressure among children and teenagers have nearly doubled over the past two decades.

Blood Pressure In UK: The Lancet Study and Why Doctors Are Concerned in the UK

Hypertension has long been associated with people in their 30s and 40s, often linked to work stress and ageing. Today, however, shifts in daily habits and increasingly inactive lifestyles mean the condition is appearing more often in children and adolescents too. For years, young people were largely overlooked in discussions around blood pressure, and routine screening was rarely carried out. As a result, the true scale of the problem remained unclear. UK doctors are now calling for a nationwide testing programme to assess how widespread the issue is and to identify children who may need early support and treatment.

What Is Hypertension?

Hypertension is the clinical term for high blood pressure. It develops when the force of blood pushing through the arteries remains higher than what is considered healthy over time. Arteries are the blood vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the brain and the rest of the body. High blood pressure is often described as a silent killer because it can cause lasting damage without clear warning signs or symptoms.

Blood Pressure: How Is It Diagnosed?

Blood pressure is usually checked using a monitor with an inflatable cuff placed around the upper arm. The reading is shown as two numbers, measured in millimetres of mercury, written as one over the other. The top number, known as systolic pressure, reflects the force of blood when the heart beats and pumps blood around the body. The bottom number, called diastolic pressure, measures the pressure in the arteries when the heart relaxes between beats.

The definition of high blood pressure varies between countries. In the UK, a normal adult reading falls between 90/60 and 119/79. Readings from 120/80 to 139/89 are considered raised, while 140/90 and above is classed as high blood pressure. In the United States, readings between 130/80 and 139/89 are labelled stage 1 hypertension, with stage 2 beginning at 140/90.

Diagnosing hypertension in children is more complex. Blood pressure naturally changes as children grow and depends on age, height, and sex. Rather than fixed numbers, doctors diagnose high blood pressure when a child’s readings fall within the highest five per cent for others of the same age, height, and sex.

Blood Pressure In UK: Who Is At Risk?

High blood pressure is widespread, particularly among older adults. Around one in three adults in the UK and nearly half of adults in the US live with hypertension. Age plays a key role because arteries gradually lose flexibility and become thicker over time. Family history also matters, as genetics can increase risk. People from Black African, Black Caribbean, and South Asian backgrounds are known to face a higher likelihood of developing the condition.

Lifestyle choices also have a strong influence. Diets high in salt, being overweight or obese, lack of regular physical activity, smoking, excessive alcohol intake, and prolonged stress can all contribute to raised blood pressure.

What About Children?

In babies and very young children, high blood pressure is usually linked to underlying medical issues such as heart defects, kidney disease, or genetic and hormonal conditions. This form is known as secondary hypertension. Since the 1990s, however, rates of high blood pressure among children and adolescents have risen more than fourfold, reaching around six per cent. Poor diets, low levels of physical activity, and increasing rates of overweight and obesity are major factors behind this rise.

Why Is Hypertension Harmful?

High blood pressure can quietly harm the body for many years before symptoms appear. Constant strain on the blood vessels can lead to aneurysms, where weakened artery walls bulge and may rupture, sometimes with fatal consequences. The heart is forced to work harder, increasing the risk of heart failure. Damage to the inner lining of arteries can trigger inflammation and the buildup of plaques, making blood vessels narrower and less flexible. This restricts blood flow and raises the risk of chest pain, irregular heartbeats, and heart attacks.

The kidneys are especially sensitive to high blood pressure. Damaged blood vessels can stop them from filtering waste effectively, potentially leading to kidney failure that requires dialysis or a transplant. The eyes can also be affected, as their delicate blood vessels are prone to damage, causing bleeding, blurred vision, or even blindness.

When blood flow to the brain is reduced by narrowed or blocked arteries, it can lead to vascular dementia or mini-strokes. Severe cases may result in major strokes caused by clots or bleeding linked to long-term high blood pressure.

In children, hypertension can harm vital organs such as the heart, kidneys, and eyes at an early age. This makes early detection and treatment crucial to protect long-term health.

Awareness about mental health has grown, but access to care remains a challenge. For women, stigma is only one barrier. Social and family responsibilities, financial dependence, caregiving, geographical gaps, and the tendency to dismiss symptoms as “hormonal” can also delay care, said experts on World Suicide Prevention Day 2026.

HealthandMe spoke to mental health experts about why awareness has not translated into equitable access to care.

WHO estimates that 6.9% of adult women globally have depression, compared with 4.6% of adult men — making depression about 1.5 times more common among women.

“Awareness has grown faster than access, but this isn't a gap women are failing to close on their own; it's a reflection of where women are placed in our social and family structures to begin with,” Dr Kavita, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Founding Cohort Member, India Mental Health Alliance and Co-founder, Children First, told HealthandMe.

She said the gaps extend across diagnosis, research, interventions and care pathways. “Currently, care pathways, definitions, interventions and policies do not center women,” she said.

Why Women Delay Mental Healthcare

Dr Mimansa Singh Tanwar, Senior Clinical Psychologist and Head of the Fortis School Mental Health Program, said stigma is compounded by social and cultural barriers.

“Gender roles, unequal distribution of power, financial dependence, even the caregiving responsibilities, safety concerns, all of these are some of the social and cultural factors that affect women's access to mental health care,” she said.

Women may also put family responsibilities ahead of their own health.

“Women still tend to forego care because of the added responsibility that they continue to have when it comes to taking care of family and other responsibilities,” Tanwar told HealthandMe.

Dr Priyanka Mittal, Clinical Psychologist and Lead, IMHA, said financial dependence can limit women's ability to seek care.

“When a woman doesn't control her own finances, seeking help for her mental health isn't a decision she gets to make independently,” she said.

The expert highlighted how women's distress are often minimized.

“She's called ‘sensitive,’ ‘hormonal,’ or ‘going through her problems’ — rather than recognized as someone with a mental health concern worth addressing,” Mittal told HealthandMe.

When Symptoms Are Dismissed As ‘Hormonal’

Pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause and menopause can involve biological changes that affect mood. But experts caution against treating persistent distress as simply hormonal.

WHO estimates that about 10% of pregnant women and 13% of women who have recently given birth experience a mental disorder, primarily depression.

“While there are biological changes that can affect our mood and can lead to anxiety, depression, irritability, and emotional exhaustion, these biological changes should not be only connoted as being hormonal and phase-like,” Tanwar said.

Dr Jothi Neeraja, Founder, Chairwoman and MD, Maarga MindCare Hospitals, said women's distress is often attributed to life circumstances rather than recognised as a mental health concern.

“During pregnancy, after childbirth and around menopause, symptoms may also be attributed only to hormonal changes,” she said.

Dr Kavita said even well-meaning explanations can delay care.

“A lot of it comes from genuinely well-meaning explanations,” she said. “Mood changes after childbirth are common, so families, and sometimes clinicians, default to ‘it's just hormones’ or ‘every new mother feels this way.’”

“Duration, severity and functional impact matter more than the explanation someone reaches for,” she said.

Rural Women Face Another Care Gap

The experts noted that access to mental health can be even more limited outside urban centers.

“If a woman reaches a medical system at all, it's usually a PHC, and usually for an emergency or childbirth — not for mental health,” Mittal said.

Tele-services such as Tele-MANAS and other free or affordable services have started helping bridge some of the gap, particularly in tier-two and rural areas, she said.

Dr Kavita also pointed to gaps in community-level mental health infrastructure, saying services closer to women may be too limited to provide meaningful care.

Access Is Not Enough

Starting treatment does not guarantee continuity of care. “Even if, let's say, care is started, the continuity with which one is able to maintain that may not be there again because of the multiple responsibilities that they have to bear,” Tanwar said.

Neeraja said mental healthcare must extend beyond helplines. “For women, however, access cannot end with a helpline,” she said.

She called for continuity of care, affordable specialists, screening through reproductive and primary healthcare services, privacy and stronger referral systems.

“Mental healthcare becomes meaningful when seeking help is easy, safe and followed by appropriate care,” she said.

Mittal described treatment as a chain in which every step matters.

“It's a series of events... you need to know it exists, then know where to go, then know the steps that follow. Miss any link, and the cycle of treatment or intervention breaks,” she said.

Building Women-Centered Mental Healthcare

The experts said mental healthcare should be integrated into services women already use.

“It would meet women where they already are, rather than expecting them to seek out psychiatry or therapy separately,” Dr Kavita said.

This could include mental health screening during antenatal and postnatal visits, training obstetricians and gynecologists to identify concerns, and helping primary-care providers recognise warning signs.

Families and partners can also play a role in recognizing changes and encouraging women to seek help.

Awareness, the experts said, must ultimately translate into accessible, affordable and continuous care. “Women-centered care isn't a separate track; it's the standard track for care, done well,” Dr Kavita said...

Prostate cancer remains the fourth most common cancer worldwide and the most frequently diagnosed cancer in men across most nations, with an estimated 1.5 million new cases and nearly 420,000 deaths in 2024 alone.

Despite how common it is, misinformation still shapes how men view their risk, symptoms, and treatment choices. Here's a closer look at some myths that just won't go away, and what the evidence actually says.

1. Myth: A high prostate-specific antigen (PSA) number automatically means cancer.

Fact: PSA can rise for reasons that have nothing to do with cancer, including prostatitis and an enlarged prostate (benign prostatic hyperplasia or BPH). A raised PSA is a cue to investigate further, not a diagnosis in itself.

2. Myth: Prostate cancer always comes with warning symptoms.

Fact: Early-stage disease is usually silent. Most men are picked up through screening or incidental testing, and symptoms like trouble urinating typically show up only once the cancer has advanced.

Also read: Hot Tea, Coffee May Triple Esophageal Cancer Risk: Study

3. Myth: Testosterone therapy fuels prostate cancer.

Fact: This idea comes from decades-old research. More recent studies haven’t found that testosterone replacement therapy meaningfully raises prostate cancer risk in most men, though doctors still monitor patients on it as a precaution.

4. Myth: No family history means you’re in the clear.

Fact: A family history does raise risk, but most men diagnosed have no affected close relative. Age, ethnicity, and lifestyle count just as much.

5. Myth: Treatment always leaves men permanently impotent or incontinent.

Fact: Side effects vary depending on the treatment, the person’s overall health, and the stage of cancer. Many men see real improvement within a year, and not everyone experiences these issues at all.

Also read: 9/11-Linked Cancer Cases Surge 75%: Why Researchers Are Concerned

6. Myth: Only older men need to worry about this.

Fact: Risk does climb with age, especially past 50, but men in their forties can be affected too, particularly with a strong family history or certain genetic mutations.

7. Myth: Getting a vasectomy raises your risk of prostate cancer.

Fact: Decades of research have consistently found no link between vasectomy and prostate cancer risk, despite how persistent this myth has been.

8. Myth: A prostate cancer diagnosis means your days are numbered.

Fact: Prostate cancer has one of the highest survival rates among major cancers when caught early, and many men live for decades after diagnosis. Outcomes depend heavily on the stage and grade at diagnosis, not the diagnosis itself, and many low-risk cases never need aggressive treatment at all.

9. Myth: How often a man ejaculates affects his prostate cancer risk.

Fact: Several large studies have found no such link, and some even suggest higher ejaculation frequency may be tied to slightly lower risk. It isn’t something men need to actively manage.

Created for general disease awareness only. Kindly consult your physician for any further information.

Are urologists seeing more difficult or complex kidney stones in recent years? Yes, it’s true. Nowadays the trend for oxalate stones and infective stones are rising

They both are complex in their treatment. Oxalate stones are hard, they are known to grow as per the shape of the internal structure of the kidney and are one of the hardest of all stones, at times, even hard for a laser to break them into fragments. Harder stones may need a second procedure to break them into finer fragments.

Infective stones primarily have infection within them, very common in diabetics and long term infected stones. These stones can fill up the kidney with pus and can be life threatening as well, causing diffuse infection in the blood, called as sepsis. With incidence of diabetes the management of these stones require considerable expertise and caution.

How can dehydration and not drinking enough water increase the risk of kidney stones?

The contemporary understanding of the genesis of kidney stones is the 'solute-solvent' theory. It means than more the amount of crystals (read solute viz oxalate crystals, uric acid crystals etc.) and less the amount of water, concentrated urine, lesser is the solubility of these crystals in the urine. Thus they sediment and cause faster stone formation.

Also read: What Happens When Kidney Function Declines: Understanding The Stages Of Chronic Kidney Disease

Can eating more processed foods, salt and protein than the body needs make kidney stones more likely?

Processed foods are high on oxalates and phosphorus. They act as the primary anion in stone formation. Thus promoting higher amount stone formation and harder stones as well. Also protein in urine helps in stabilising the already aggregated crystals, thus leading to a harder stone. Protein supplements are to be consumed only as per the contemporary need of the body after consulting a dietician

Can more fruits and vegetables and staying well hydrated help prevent kidney stones?

Definitely! Another point i want to make here is that there are some naturally occurring substances in urine which prevent stone formation, viz citrate. Higher the citrate levels in urine, lesser are the chances of stone formation. Thus it is advisable to have more citrate in diet (citrus fruits). For patients with recurrent stone formation in kidney, it is advisable to use citrate supplements. Another factor is blood uric acid levels.

Uric acid crystals can independently form a stone and it can deposit itself on already formed stone, making it later and more complex to treat. Uric acid is majorly found in animal based diet. There are other factors which may reduce the stone formation, however till date only proven thing to prevent stone is abundant citrate and good amount of water intake. All fruits have variable amount of citrate however citrus fruits have the most.

By Dr. Sony Mehta, Consultant Urologist, Saifee Hospital, Mumbai