This has been found to be just as dangerous as diastolic hypertension. Only five percent of high blood pressure has a known cause, usually related to kidney disease. In about a quarter to half the people with high pressures, hypertension is linked to an excessive sensitivity to salt, in others, it is triggered by excess alcohol. Two ounces of alcohol a day will put up your blood pressure and keep it up. Foods containing potassium may be protective.
Obese individuals are likely to be hypertensive.
Your vascular plumbing becomes harder with age which will also raise your blood pressure because the blood vessels are less resilient so they don't stretch with the heart's output. To explain, your heart is a muscle, just like your bicep. Initially, this muscle can pump over higher pressures for a short time, as it does during times of exercise, stress, etc. If this high pressure is sustained, the heart pump will eventually fail and not be able to pump enough blood out of the heart and into the organs. On of the first and most dangerous organ to suffer from this reduced blood flow is the brain, in the occurrence of strokes.