High blood pressure, or hypertension, is a serious problem which may lead to other health problems. It is estimated that around one in three adult Americans suffer from high blood pressure – but as hypertension has no symptoms it is also estimated that around 40% of sufferers arecompletely unaware that they have a problem. Clearly it is advisable to have your blood pressure checked by a medical professional on a regular basis.
There are many very efficient drugs available to control blood pressure, but these may have side effects and there will always be some unfortunate sufferers who do not respond to medication. However, there are a number of simple steps which can be taken to lower high blood pressure without the use of drugs and many of these have other health benefits also.
Weight reduction is, for many people, the first step in reducing moderate to mild hypertension. Combined with regular aerobic exercise – e.g., jogging, walking – this can be very effective. Regular light exercise improves blood flow and helps to reduce both at rest heart rate and blood pressure.
Reducing the amount of sugar contained in your diet will often help to reduce high blood pressure.
Another relatively simple dietary modification that has been proven to be highly effective in reducing hypertension is the reduction of the level of salt ingested. This one measure will be effective for around 60% of hypertension sufferers. There’s no need to have a bland diet – salt substitutes can be used as an effective means of instantly cutting salt intake.
Further changes to the diet which may be effective in reducing hypertension include the adoption of the DASH diet. This is rich in fruit, vegetables and low fat or fat free dairy foods. It has been shown to be effective based on research carried out in the USA.
Boosting the level of calcium in your diet has the effect of raising dietary potassium which can, in theory, counteract the effect of sodium and act upon the kidney to lower blood pressure.
Quitting smoking has been shown to lower blood pressure. The exact mechanism is not fully understood but it is known that blood pressure always rises transiently following nicotine consumption. Stopping smoking has many additional health /advantages in addition to reduced hypertension.
Lowering alcohol intake has also been shown to lower blood pressure. As with stopping smoking, it has many other health benefits and should be considered by anyone wishing to improve their health in general.
Lowering stress levels can also benefit many high blood pressure sufferers. Avoidance of stressful situations can be effective. Relaxation therapy and meditation can also help. New devices, e.g. resperate, utilize paced breathing techniques which have been shown to reduce hypertension if used on a regular basis.
You must be aware that one of the best ways to ensure your continuing health as you age is lowering high blood pressure readings, but few people understand how to lower blood pressure enough to make a significant difference in their well-being. You should start by understanding how blood pressure works.
Blood pressure is two measurements, not one: diastolic and systolic blood pressures. The first, diastolic, is a measure of how hard your heart is pumping blood out when it contracts; the second is a measure of how well blood is flowing back into your heart when it relaxes. Normal blood pressure should measure 120 diastolic and 80 systolic or below, written 120/80. When it’s over this, but below 140/90, you have prehypertension; over this, and you have high blood pressure. You must learn how to lower blood pressure right away if you want your health to improve.
There are some very simple things you can do to lower high blood pressure, but it is all up to you. Start by modifying your daily life, in the following order of importance. Stop smoking right away, and limit the sodium, alcohol, and caffeine you consume daily. Replace fat in the food you eat with fresh fruit and vegetables, especially high-fiber ones like celery or oranges. Start performing some exercises, and lose some weight. If you have a high-stress lifestyle, look for ways to decrease the stress.
Once you’ve made these changes, you will start controlling high blood pressure problems. But for many people, these changes are not enough. Your doctor has medications you can take that will further lower your blood pressure, but the side effects can be too much to deal with. You need natural ways to lower high blood pressure that are easier on your body and your lifestyle.
The best answer to how to lower blood pressure naturally is by adhering to the DASH diet. This diet consists of:
- Eating more fresh fruit, vegetables, and lowfat dairy
- Eliminating as much saturated fat, cholesterol, and overall fat as possible, in that order of importance
- Replacing many red meats and sweets in your diet with whole grains, fish, poultry, and nuts
- Increasing your intake of foods rich in magnesium, calcium, and potassium
All these changes incorporate foods that lower blood pressure naturally into your diet. You’ll find that instead of wondering how to lower blood pressure by changing your lifestyle, your blood pressure will start dropping by itself. The better you take care of yourself by watching your diet and exercise, the healthier your blood pressure will become.
More on high blood pressure diet
Even the blood pressure of a normal person will increase, when he gets to know that high blood pressure is one of the leading causes of heart attack and stroke in USA. Hence it is not surprising for why it is labeled as the ‘silent killer’!
But, what are the causes that the related statistics as for the number of patients is growing so fast? Let’s try to find a probable reason here.
First things first, there are two types of high blood pressures– Primary hypertension and secondary hypertension. Of the two, the former accounts for 95% of the cases. The causes of primary hypertension are many. When it is from a specific abnormality in one of the organs, it is known as secondary hypertension.
Primary hypertension has a vast membership. It has within its fold about 75 million Americans. But the diagnosis of this type of hypertension is not always easy. The type of attack varies from individual to individual. However, some common factors can be elucidated.
The main culprit found till date for high blood pressure is salt. So you should immediately cut extra iodine and salt intake as soon as you find that you are hypertensive.
Genetic factors are also playing a foul role for the serious types of ailments and primary hypertension. But the exact genes that have to take the blame are yet to be identified. The present research is on the renin-angiotension-aldosterone system. It is the system that helps to regulate blood pressure, controls salt balances as well as the elasticity of the arteries.
Now, let’s analyze threadbare how some of the causes of primary hypertension play their dubious role. The noticeable abnormality is that you have an increased resistance in the arteries; they are not as elastic, especially the small arteries that are at a distance from the heart. Obese people are haunted by this problem. Those eating too much salt, not doing any physical exercises and also the aging people are likely to own this sort of hypertension. The sodium in the salt is absolutely brutal on the high blood pressure patients.
Review your life styles and diet habits. You will be surprised yourself about the deficiencies that you have been putting on with, so far in your life. You have the high blood pressure. It’s the wake up call. Your arteries have become clogged. Even the County gutters are cleaned periodically, so that they don’t get chocked. You own the God-given divine instrument- your body! Reschedule your day’s routine and allocate time for walking and exercises. If you don’t do that, you may anyhow have to do walking exercises to your physician’s chamber!
Prevention is always better than cure! You need to say that to at least 75 million times to cure the BP patients!
High blood pressure, or the hypertension, as it is commonly named, is a condition that can affect us without even knowing its specific symptoms, because there are none. The silent killer can be controlled with the proper medicated treatment and by following the doctor advises. The first thing you have to do after you have been diagnosed with hypertension, is to be aware and to learn how to live with it, because the faster you take some measures, the faster you can stop it from threatening your life.
Being a chronic disease, there is nothing yet that can cure it. We can only try to ameliorate it and to control it by making drastic changes in our lives. Begin with changing the way you eat, change the lifestyle you have and make sure you follow the medicated treatment prescribed by your doctor: these are the right steps towards healing hypertension.
Hypertension can lead to major breakdowns of our body’s systems if we do not take the right measures and the consequences are very serious: complicated heart attacks, strokes or the failure of your kidneys.
This article will provide you with a simple 3-steps program that can help you reduce and regulate your high blood pressure and prevent it from taking over your life.
Step 1: Eat Healthy!
Eating healthy might seem easy for someone who hasn’t tried it yet. It involves changing your whole way of life and you must forget and put away your old eating habits and apply the new rules of healthy eating. You can begin with a small step, like reducing the quantity of salt you used to prepare the meals. A higher quantity of salt can produce edema, the retention of water. Normally, the water from our body must be eliminated through the urine. The salt interferes in the process and a big part of the water that should be eliminated is blocked within our bodies, creating excess. This will cause a pressure on the walls of the blood vessels, the main reason for the occurrence of hypertension.
If you feel you can’t live without salt, you can replace it with salt substitutes or tasty combinations of other seasonings. The taste of the food might not be the same as before, but your hypertension will slowly lose its power.
Changing the way you eat and the things you eat, will determine you to begin lose the excess of weight too. It is a common fact that hypertension is caused by obesity, by the fat accumulated in our body which thickens the walls of the blood vessels and increases the blood pressure as a consequence.
To guide the people in finding the right way to control hypertension through healthy eating, in 1997, the Journal of Medicine from New England published a work that was lately approved by the US government as an excellent method to prevent hypertension. This amazing writing was the DASH diet, which means Dietary Approaches To Stop Hypertension. This is a diet based on healthy food, tasty and beneficial for our body too, including all the proteins, vitamins, fibers and minerals necessary to our body.
Step 2: Quit Smoking And Reduce The Amount Of Alcohol!
If you are a smoker or you are used to have more than a couple of drinks daily, you might take a minute and think about how this affects your health. It is hard to leave behind those nasty habits, and the best way to do it isn’t to go through it by yourself. You will not make it. Search for advice and counselling in your personal physician and you will have professional support while you will improve your life.
Step 3: Be Active!
A sedentary way of life will certainly not help you in reducing the risqu of hypertension. Our busy schedules don’t leave us much choice when it comes to our free time. We prefer to relax and watch a movie instead of exercising our bodies. Do not worry; you do not have to spend hours at the gym. Ten minutes a day can work wonders on your blood circulation, by reducing the negative effect of hypertension on our bodies.
There is the case though, when we inherit hypertension. At the periodic check-up, tell your doctor if you ever had a history of hypertension in your family; it is possible that you might have it too. The only thing you can do is to protect yourself by avoiding the things that allow the hypertension to become serious in the first place. There are also drugs included in the category of antihypertensive; not every one of them might work for your type of body, and you will have to try a whole list of drugs until you find the one that works on your hypertension. Pay attention, though! If you take the drugs and still go on with your old lifestyle, do not expect any results! The right combination of hypertension inhibitors includes: healthy food, exercises and a healthy way of life (no cigarettes or alcohol).
Have you ever known someone (typically older and male) who refused to be taken to the doctor unless they were on their death bed? Chances are you might know that alpha male who refuses help from everyone, especially a doctor. Perhaps you are that person who is secretly researching facts about high blood pressure (also called hypertension) while the family is fast asleep? Whatever the reasons, you are making the right decision to educate yourself on the disease doctors call the ’silent killer’. For your family, for yourself and your life, please keep reading.
Hypertension Facts to Consider
1. Cardiovascular Disease is the leading killer in the developed world (including US).
2. Almost 17 million people around the world die of cardiovascular disease each year, accounting for 29% of all deaths globally.
3. Many of the causes of heart-related disability and death – stroke, heart attack, congestive heart failure, and end-stage renal disease – are linked by a common cause: high blood pressure (hypertension).
4. About 1 and 3 adults in America have high blood pressure. Prevalence is even higher in Europe.
5. Hypertension has been labeled the ’silent killer’ because it produces no symptoms and about one third of people with hypertension do not know they have it.
6. Hypertension is treatable and curable.
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The summer season is fast approaching, and with it the typical list of skinned knees and elbows, bug bites and sunburns. Sometimes something more serious happens as well though – would you be prepared to assist if someone nearby broke an arm or leg, or was in some other way seriously injured? In order to be prepared for these minor cuts and bumps as well as for more serious personal injuries, it is important to have sufficient first aid supplies as well as skills.
It’s important not only to have plenty of first aid supplies, but to have the right ones – many kits may include hydrogen peroxide for sterilizing cuts and scratches as well as syrup of ipecac for administration in the even of poisoning. Although these are sometimes considered “traditional wisdom” both come with cautions – health experts point out that hydrogen peroxide does not necessarily kill bacteria as is widely believed, and for some types of wounds it has been proven to actually slow healing.
Syrup of ipecac can cause nausea and vomiting for extended periods of time – so although it will eliminate a noxious substance from the system, it can also cause other complications such as severe dehydration and damage to the stomach lining, especially in small children. Your best bet for poison control is an activated carbon/charcoal tablet system – administering this to the poisoned individual may help while you wait for additional assistance from Poison Control.
As far as wounds – for all but deep or ragged wounds, soap and water is your best bet for sanitization; however with any serious wound or injury, get professional medical help as soon as possible. A basic first aid kit should include at least two dozen individually wrapped adhesive tapes in assorted shapes and sizes, along with several sterile gauze pads in case of a serious wound – the larger the pads the better, as they have many potential uses.
It’s important to have a large role of some type of micropore adhesive tape as well, in case a custom adhesive needs to be fashioned to keep a gauze pad in place, and scissors or shears will be needed both for cutting tape and gauze as well as potentially cutting clothing to expose an injured area or to fashion a sling. Tweezers, a thermometer, and an antibiotic lotion or healing salves of some kind are mainstays of any first aid kit, and calamine lotion should be included particularly for the summer season.
Make sure that you have a set of sterile, disposable gloves (preferably non-latex in case of sensitivities), chemical hot and cold pads, and a thermometer as well – whether you purchase these items in a ready-made kit from a first aid training authority or obtain them separately and put them together in a kit on your own, such a collection of health and wellness items will certainly serve you well this summer. We all hope never to need them, but they can literally be life savers if you keep them handy!
“Everyone needs some stress. It is what makes us get up in the morning and do the things we do. It makes us achieve things and get from A to B and in doing so our Blood Pressure has to rise – it is part of the normal way of things”.
I paraphrase slightly but the gist of the above comment came from a conversation with a Doctor recently whilst reviewing my Blood Pressure medication.
I’m quite chuffed really in that I have managed to get my blood pressure down to manageable proportions and am in the process of changing the medication.
I have been moved from amlodipine which is a Calcium Channel Blocker to Lisinopril which is described as an “Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor” – an ACE Inhibitor but this is an aside, the real purpose of this article is to discuss stress and it’s influence on High Blood Pressure
As was mentioned earlier, if you let stress either get to you or stay (for whatever reason) at perpetually high levels the risk of acquiring stress induced High Blood Pressure obviously increases.
Also not to beat around the bush for a minute, the risk of Stress related “Late Onset” Type 2 Diabetes also increases massively.
Alongside the risk of Type Diabetes there are a whole number of associated conditions that could arise and basically none of them do you any good.
Age is not really a factor here, it used to be but with current stress levels in Society, any sustained levels of stress are not good for you.
Learn to manage your stress and deal with it. Coming to terms and understanding where you are at present is a start and trying to find ways of coping with the stress is important.
Part of the problem with sustained stress and today’s Society is that we lack either the wherewithal or the motivation to be able to deal with our stress in sensible ways.
If you follow the stereotypical picture of today’s stressed out executive, the usual response to dealing with Stress is either through Alcohol (which induces associated problems of its own) or through severe exercise via a Gym.
Now firstly let me say, that there is nothing wrong with a small drink from time to time. I have been known to participate with the odd drink myself from time to time (in my younger days of course ) but taken to excess this can also add to your High Blood Pressure instead of reducing it.
Also the same can be said for working out in the gym. If all you need to do is to work out some of your frustration from the day then OK but if you happen to be harbouring an increased and unexplained Blood Pressure level then just blundering in and assuming extreme exercise is going to solve it is slightly dangerous.
It might in fact make things worse.
If it does not sound either too trite or too obvious the best way to deal with Stress is to try and not get it in the first place. Learn to take things in your stride and above all learn to relax.
Chill, take it easy – it might just save your life.
A major global study, conducted by few Canadian doctors, reported in August 2004 that it should be possible to prevent most premature heart attacks, after finding risk factors transcended ethnic and racial divides.
The study found that heart attacks can be predicted by 9 factors that are common to Europeans, Asians, Africans, Arabs, and other ethnic groups and races. As identified by the study, the two most severe factors for premature heart disease were smoking and high abnormal ratio of blood lipids while the other 7 factors were high blood pressure, diabetes, abdominal obesity, stress, a lack of daily consumption of fruits and vegetables, excessive intake of alcohol, and a lack of exercise.
A survey of 29,000 people in 52 countries during the study proved that almost all risk factors were similar, could be detected, and therefore could be prevented. This is in contrast with the conventional wisdom that had previously suggested that only half of the risks of premature heart attack could be forecasted.
It is known that if one had already suffered and survived a heart attack, he or she will have a very high risk of getting another. However, the finding from Manchester Royal Infirmary researchers, who tracked nearly 600 patients for a year after they had suffered a heart attack, revealed that having a close relationship may save a heart attack sufferer from another heart attack. The research paper was published in the British Medical Association’s journal, Heart in 2004.
Patients who had a close friend, a relative or a confidant were half as likely to suffer another heart attack within the year, compared to those without any close relationships. This continued to be true even after taking into account the severity of the heart attack and other risk factors.
It was noted that those without good friends or lovers were more likely to drink heavily, smoke and take drugs, but these factors alone did not explain the increased risk. One possibility explanation is that a close friend or partner may make sure a patient seeks treatment early and sticks to it. Factors that increased the risk of recurrent heart attacks included lack of social support. It is believed that people who have no close friend or confidant may react to stress in a more pronounced fashion. This is potentially dangerous because the heart is more susceptible to arrthymias (disrupted rhythms) in the post-heart attack phase.
Heart Disease Prevention – 8 Simple Ways You Can Do Immediately, Go to: www.howtopreventheartdisease.com
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