It is difficult to be precise about that. But high blood pressure, usually called "hypertension" is an extremely common condition. In USA and Europe estimates are up to 20% of the total adult population may have it although a high proportion of those people are unaware of having it. The condition is more common among men than women, incidence being highest in the middle aged and elderly in both genders, but indications are significant numbers of young adults are also hypertensive but are much less likely to realise that because you often do not get any symptoms and most do not have medical exams for their job or health in the way older people tend to..

But why it is apparent that people with high blood pressure are statistically a high component in total death statistics in the world can be seen if we examine the total deaths figures from the UK. These indicate the group of diseases causing the highest number of total deaths in the country as a whole are “circulatory system diseases” . In total these account for just over 533.2 deaths men's deaths per 100,000 and 519.4 women's deaths out per every 100,000 deaths per year in the UK, and that is likely to be proportionally representative of all developed countries. Having high blood pressure is almost always a major factor when somebody has a circulatory system disease.

To clarify this, the highest number statistically in this group of diseases is death caused by “acute myocardial infarction” . That has caused 232 male deaths and 164 female deaths on average per year. The characteristic symptoms of this is sudden pain in the centre of your chest as well as acute shortage of breath, cold clammy skin, nausea and loss of consciousness and evidence is strong that most often high blood pressure leads to that happening to you. That is the strongest reason why health professionals are increasingly advising everybody to have their blood pressure monitored, as if it is found to be high this can be treated by drugs so as to minimise the risk to your health before it endangers your life.

Looking again at statistics on circulatory system diseases, the second highest death causer is “other ischaemic heart disease” which means disease caused by insufficient supply of blood to a specific organ or tissue of you Here too high blood pressure is also very usually a key factor in the cause. Ischaemic heart disease statistically causes 119 male deaths and 93.5 female deaths per year on average. The third highest is Cerebrovascular Disease. That means any disease affecting an artery within and supplying blood to your brain, where again in a high proportion of cases high blood pressure is culprit leading to the problem. Overall Cerebrovascular Disease causes 104.2 mens deaths and 158.9 women's deaths per year.

“Other circulatory and heart diseases" which may often be triggered by high blood pressure statistically cause 70.1 men's deaths and 93.9 women's deaths per year on average. Hypertension just on its own, without any of the above happening as well statistically causes 7.3 men's deaths and 8.6 women's deaths .