Some people and animals can have serious insulin problems without getting high blood pressure — even when they're obese — which means these insulin issues don't always cause high blood pressure.

Having trouble with insulin in people who have diabetes or are overweight might play a role in getting high blood pressure — which often shows up with those conditions — but we're not sure if it's actually causing it.

Even though high insulin levels can briefly rev up the nervous system and make the kidneys hold onto salt, having high insulin for a long time doesn’t seem to raise blood pressure in people or animals — fat or thin — so it probably isn’t the main reason high blood pressure happens in obesity.

High insulin levels and insulin resistance are linked to high blood pressure in people, especially those who are overweight — but even some people at a healthy weight. This connection doesn’t show up in other types of high blood pressure, so it might be a key factor in the most common kind.

Insulin might not actually raise your blood pressure after all — recent studies haven't been able to prove that having too much insulin in your blood leads to high blood pressure.

If we reduce insulin resistance and high insulin levels in the body, it might help lower blood pressure — so better insulin health could mean healthier blood pressure.