How does having high blood pressure increase my risk of cardiovascular disease?

How does having high blood pressure increase my risk of cardiovascular disease? So your arteries are designed to be stretchy to cope with changes in blood pressure going up or down. If you have persistently raised blood pressure, if you imagine a pipe that's constantly being sort of overfilled and stretched, the blood vessels can become quite tight and stiff or even narrowed. The narrowing makes it easier for fatty deposits and fatty material to build up in the walls, causing them to clog up. Over time that narrowing can happen in key organs such as the brain which can lead to vascular dementia lead to an increased risk of having a stroke, the kidney which can result in developing chronic kidney disease and the need for dialysis, the eyes which can result in reduced ability to see and also the heart which can cause a narrowing in the coronary arteries which supply the heart muscle with blood and put people at higher risk of having a heart attack.