High Blood Pressure
Functional medicine support tailored to uncover the root cause of complex symptoms.
Consult with our care team to understand next steps and build a personalized plan.
Serving Denver Metro, Fort Collins, and Colorado Springs.
About This Condition
Hypertension is a chronic elevation of arterial blood pressure that, over time, increases the risk of cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and renal disease. It is highly prevalent, often asymptomatic, and frequently detected through routine screening rather than specific complaints. Sustained elevations in blood pressure contribute to vascular remodeling, atherosclerosis progression, left ventricular hypertrophy, and microvascular damage in multiple organ systems.
Clinical presentation is frequently silent, but some individuals report nonspecific symptoms such as headaches, visual changes, or fatigue. Long-standing uncontrolled hypertension is a major risk factor for coronary artery disease, heart failure, stroke, peripheral arterial disease, chronic kidney disease, and retinopathy. Even moderate elevations in blood pressure can significantly increase long-term risk, particularly when combined with other cardiometabolic abnormalities.
Diagnosis is based on standardized blood pressure measurements obtained on multiple occasions or via ambulatory or home monitoring, after excluding transient elevations due to stress, acute illness, or measurement error. Management includes lifestyle modification and, when indicated, pharmacologic therapy tailored to overall cardiovascular risk, comorbidities, and tolerability, with the goal of achieving and maintaining target blood pressure ranges to reduce complications.
Common Symptoms
- •Often asymptomatic and detected incidentally on routine blood pressure measurement
- •Nonspecific headaches, particularly in the occipital region, in some individuals with markedly elevated blood pressure
- •Visual disturbances, blurred vision, or transient visual obscurations in more advanced or poorly controlled hypertension
- •Fatigue, reduced exercise tolerance, or exertional dyspnea, especially when cardiac involvement or concomitant conditions are present
- •Epistaxis or palpitations reported by some patients, although these are not specific to hypertension
Conventional Treatment Options
Lifestyle and nutrition
Stress reduction
Medication optimization when needed
Our Functional Medicine Approach
Blood pressure is a system output
Patients with hypertension typically end up on a medication — sometimes two or three — with little investigation of why their pressure runs high. Underneath, most cases are driven by insulin resistance, vascular inflammation, sodium-potassium balance, kidney filtration patterns, sleep apnea, autonomic stress, or hormonal shifts (especially perimenopause). The medications work, but they treat the readout, not the system.
How Spire works the root cause
Our Metabolic Health Program runs a structured hypertension workup — ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, advanced lipid and insulin labs, kidney function and electrolyte panels, sleep apnea screening when the pattern suggests it, and stress-axis evaluation. From there we treat the upstream driver and de-escalate medications deliberately as your numbers respond — not just stack more pills.
Who this is for
Adults on multiple blood pressure medications who want a path to fewer, patients with new-onset or labile hypertension that hasn't been worked up beyond a prescription, and anyone whose blood pressure spiked with perimenopause, weight changes, or sleep disturbance.