[Essential hypertension: psychosomatic aspects]

Essential hypertension is a heterogenous disease made up of several still unspecified subgroups. According to the dual theory of hypertension, acquired and genetic factors can lead to vascular muscle defects and increased sympathetic drive, which, either both or each alone, can lead to an increased vascular resistance. Acquired factors can either help a predisposition to become a manifest disease, act by itself to cause a disease or prevent a genetic trait from becoming manifest. Among the acquired factors, we differentiate those lying inside the personality, which means they are early acquired in life and those lying outside of the individual such as job-stress, noise exposure etc. How the external stressors are perceived depends upon the personality make up and the social support system. Within the presented model the Greek word 'crisis' plays an important role, since it characterizes a state in which a decision has to be made. In a situation in which a decision cannot be made in reality or tried out in fantasy life, the organism will activate the autonomic nervous system in a planless fashion, alternating very rapidly between its two branches, with concomitant symptoms of trembling, piloerection, salivation, vomiting, urination, defecation etc. In case this persists for a longer period of time the reciprocity between the two systems may break down, the organism seems to be psychologically immobilized. In the beginning of stress exposure, increased sympathetic nervous system activity is seen as an adaptive response, thereby enabling the individual to cope, but if the attempts to cope meet with constant failure, the stress becomes unbearable. The attitude of giving up which then develops is accompanied by a low level functioning of the sympathetic nervous system. This goes along with an adaptation for the baroreceptor depressor mechanism. As a consequence, any kind of additional stress would not lead to a relieving counterregulation. This might be a small stone within the mosaic of essential hypertension.