Weboteric - Health

High Blood Pressure and Hypertension

By D F Jones

High blood pressure, called ‘hypertension’, is a very common problem. Having a high blood pressure greatly increases your chances of heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes and it is important to take what steps you can to lower your blood pressure.

Exercise

Doctors and health professionals agree that exercising and keeping an active life style is a great place to start to lower blood pressure. Even 30 minutes of walking a day has been proven to help lower blood pressure. Probably the greatest single reason why the Western world suffers from high blood pressure more than most other countries is our overall sedentary lifestyle.

Ideal Weight

Also, maintaining a healthy weight is a great way to lower blood pressure. This issue goes hand in hand with exercise. Ideally, by boosting your workout you’ll also be helping yourself get to and maintain a healthy body weight. Be careful what steps you take to lose weight however! Excessive exercise can put your heart at risk, and the use of diet pills often raise blood pressure levels significantly. If you already have heart disease or dangerously high blood pressure, make sure you exercise lightly and avoid diet pills. Getting a lower blood pressure is important, but not worth having a heart attack over!

Reduce Sodium

Another key change you should make right of the bat to help get to a lower blood pressure is greatly reducing the amount of salt in your diet. The sodium from salt is well known for causing an increase in your blood pressure. Products high in sodium should generally be avoided.

Alcohol and Smoking

Lowering the amount of alcohol you drink, and quitting smoking completely will also do wonders to lower blood pressure. Smoking can wreak havoc to your blood pressure, causing it to spike erratically, and even moderate amounts of alcohol consumption can elevate blood pressure throughout the day. Though small amounts of alcohol may help raising your good cholesterol levels (effectively lowering your bad cholesterol), it’s a sort of double-edged sword because it comes at the risk of higher blood pressure.

Medical Treatment for High Blood Pressure

The most important step you should take to achieve a lower blood pressure is to see a doctor. Your doctor will probably tell you to do everything discussed here, but will also help you to determine if you need to be on a medication designed to lower blood pressure. There are a number of such medications available today – beta-blockers, calcium-channel blockers and ACE inhibitors being the most common and, if your hypertension is excessive, your doctor will probably start you off on one.