How does hypertension affect the heart?

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, significantly impacts the heart by increasing the workload on it. When the blood pressure is elevated, the heart must exert more effort to pump blood throughout the body. This increased resistance to blood flow means that the heart muscles need to work harder, leading to hypertrophy, or thickening of the heart muscle. Over time, this can result in various complications, including heart failure, as the heart struggles to cope with the heightened demand.

In contrast, decreased heart rate is not a direct consequence of hypertension; rather, it is more commonly influenced by other factors such as medications or underlying health conditions. While hypertension can lead to arrhythmias, these typically do not present immediately as a direct result of elevated blood pressure. Arrhythmias often develop from a range of long-term changes in heart structure and function due to chronic hypertension. Lastly, while hypertension can indeed affect the efficiency of blood pumping in the long term, the immediate and notable effect is the increased workload on the heart, making option B the most accurate representation of the effects of hypertension on cardiac health.