Kids Health


Hypertension (High Blood Pressure)

What Is High Blood Pressure?


  • The heart has to pump harder.


After a while, high blood pressure can damage the heart, brain, kidneys, and eyes. Finding and treating high blood pressure early can help kids be healthy.

How Does Blood Pressure Work?



What Causes High Blood Pressure?



While high blood pressure is far more common in adults, kids and teens can have it too. High blood pressure can run in families.

What Are the Signs & Symptoms of High Blood Pressure?


If your child has high blood pressure and gets any of these symptoms, get medical care right away.

How Is Blood Pressure Measured?

Health care providers measure blood pressure with a cuff that wraps around the upper arm or the leg in babies. When the cuff inflates, it squeezes a large artery, stopping the blood flow for a moment. Blood pressure is measured as air is slowly let out of the cuff, which lets blood flow through the artery again.

Blood pressure is measured in two numbers:

  1. The pressure when the heart pumps. 
  2. The pressure when the heart rests between beats.


How Is High Blood Pressure Diagnosed?

Diagnosing high blood pressure in kids can be tricky because there aren't always symptoms and blood pressure can vary from day to day. Sometimes it can take several blood pressure checks to find out a child has high blood pressure.

Often, kids' blood pressure will be higher when they are nervous. So, health care providers usually check blood pressure on a few different visits. Then, they use an average of those measurements.

For kids who are anxious and keep having high blood pressure at the doctor's office, blood pressure may be measured somewhere else, like at home or by the school nurse. Sometimes doctors use a test called ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. The child wears a blood pressure cuff for a whole day and night. This can be better information than blood pressure tests in the doctor's office because kids keep doing their usual activities, including sleep.

How Is High Blood Pressure Treated?


Doctors also might recommend lifestyle changes for kids with hypertension, such as:

Eating a healthy diet:

  • Limit salt.
  • Avoid alcohol.

Getting regular exercise for 30–60 minutes at least 3 times a week. Kids with severe hypertension should not do any weightlifting or power-lifting, bodybuilding, or strength training until their blood pressure is under control and a doctor says it's OK.



What Else Should I Know?

Even though kids with high blood pressure generally feel fine, it's important to follow the advice of the care team. A healthy diet and exercise, giving medicine if needed, and getting regular blood pressure checks can help healthy kids grow into healthy adults.

Reviewed by: Robert S. Mathias, MD

Date reviewed: 11/25/2019

