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Now people are being urged to get regular checks with a home monitor to detect the “ticking timebomb”.
Prof Graham MacGregor, of Barts Health NHS Trust and the chairman of Blood Pressure UK, warned the pandemic had led to sluggish Britons eating more calories and salt.
It created a significant rise in those with raised blood pressure – which can lead to strokes and heart disease.
He explained: “The actual evidence is reasonable that during the pandemic people were not seeing their GPs and practice nurses and were being encouraged to stay away, and their blood pressure got worse.”
He spoke as a new US study showed hospitalisations due to dangerously high blood pressure more than doubled from 2002 to 2014.
While no official figures are available for the UK, the cardiovascular medicine consultant estimates one third of the population is affected.
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He said: “A way round it is to get individuals to manage themselves, by their own blood pressure monitor.”
And he added: “The thing is there are no symptoms, so unless you have a measuring device you won’t know what it is, so it can be a bit of a ticking timebomb.”
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