Hypo and Hyper

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Caroline

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Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
Do hypo and hyper mean different things with different medical conditions? If we hypo we are low and if we hyper we are high with our blood glucose.

I only ask because a friend recently told me the proper name for LOW blood pressure is HYPERtension. She has low blood pressure because of some of her medication (mainly the anti depressants)

I know people often get the words muddled because they are similar.
 
I think your friend is wrong, I googled hypertension and it came up as high blood pressure, not low.
 
I think she's wrong too, but she is adamant that is waht her doctor told her
 
She might mean hypotension, that's low blood pressure?

Hyper and Hypo mean high and low, respectively - they're just prefixes of Greek origin. They're used for all sorts of things - thyroidism, tension (blood pressure), as well as glycaemia (blood sugar).
 
hyperactive.... hypoallergenic... etc etc
 
Now I have some replies, I am going to direct my friend here to look at them. Thanks everyone, I'm glad it's not me going crazy...
 
Hypertension is definately high blood pressure, I've had it ever since I was diagnosed with diabetes.
 
Agreed, hypertension is most definitely high blood pressure.

Andy 🙂
 
My friend came and looked and still maintains her doctor told her hypertension is low blood pressure. I am sure she misheard him.
 
Since hypertension is the more usual complaint it's easy to suspect that your friend is more familiar with the term 'hypertension' and when hearing hyp--tension their brain just filled in the gaps and genuinely 'heard' hypertension (since linguistically they sound almost identical).

An audio version of an optical illusion.

Either that or her doctor just said it wrong!
 
everydayupsanddowns;148962 Either that or her doctor just said it wrong![/QUOTE said:
That could be nearer it, her doctor is about as good as mine for giving out informaton, but she is one because the doctor said it it HAS to be true
Click to expand...
 
Interestingly, I once read that, in the UK, hypertension (high I think we are agreed!) is the main problems with blood pressure, whereas in Germany it is low blood pressure that afflicts people more. I have no idea why!
 
I suggest she visit the British Heart foundation web-site

http://www.bhf.org.uk/default.aspx

There is a search box where she can enter both hypotension and hypertension.

It could well be just a hearing thing or Dr so used to saying hyper that he did say it.

Its a bit like when we were told my FIL had a mild infarct (heart attack). He was in ICU at the time for something else and we could well had misheard this as infection as he had been having lots of those.
 
I was told I had DKA at diagnosis, but no-one explained what it was so I had to look it up when I got home!
 
Northerner said:
Interestingly, I once read that, in the UK, hypertension (high I think we are agreed!) is the main problems with blood pressure, whereas in Germany it is low blood pressure that afflicts people more. I have no idea why!
Click to expand...

It's because the Germans get all the best sun loungers when they are on holiday...
 
I've heard of cultural variations with health, but not entirely sure whether the differences are really due to variations in incidence or variations in diagnosis eg no European countries outside UK and Ireland seem to have equivalents to chilblains.
 
I am German by birth and have never done the towel thing on the sun lounger... I have HYPERtension and am on meds to lower it and I now find that when my BP is checked it sometimes is low now that it falls more into the HYPOtension level..lol
 
Hypertension is indeed high blood pressure. Hypotension which I have most of the time is low BP.
 
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