can someone break it down for me please

[Fuglydude]

If arteries swell with lipid deposits as a response to chemical stress then wouldn't physical stress cause similar effects? Such as chronic high blood pressure.


No such thing as an expert. What the truth is today can be a myth tomorrow when someone does an experiment and finds out something new. Information has an expiry date just like everything else.

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There definitely are experts in the field. One of my old profs was chair of the Faculty of Medicine's smooth muscle research group... that is an example of an expert.

Arteries don't "swell" at all. A swelling arterie is an aneurysm, which can be unstable, and if a bigger one ruptures, can be fatal quite rapidly. Atherosclerotic plaques form as a developing lesion from damage done to the endothelium. As time passes, there is progression of the lesion, and an increased degree of calcification, and fibrosis which reduces wall elasticity. This can contribute to hypertension, which in turn leads to organ damage and subsequently increases the risk of a plague rupture/thromboembolic event like a stroke or MI.

Primary hypertension is largely idiopathic... That is we don't exactly fully understand what causes it. There are many complex factors that interact together to cause HTN. Lifestyle factors, generalized stress, immune function, genetics all
contribute. Primary HTN is the most common type of HTN by far.

This is a good diagram from wikipedia showing the factors that affect BP... There's gonna be a ton of different factors that affect everything in the chart, so you'll see how its not a simple straight forward etiology.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Arterial_pressure_diagram.png