For your information, one-third of the people who have high blood pressure don’t even know it. If you’ve just been told by your physician you have high blood pressure consider yourself fortunate, your chances of having a stroke or heart attack have decreased. It’s normal for your blood pressure to go up and down throughout the day. It becomes a problem when it stays elevated. Your blood pressure needs to come down. High blood pressure also adds stress to your kidneys.
Your doctor may give you time to bring it down on your own
If that’s the case don’t take the information lightly. You need to do what you can to bring it down before your next visit, if you don’t’ take steps to bring it down your doctors first line of defense is to put you on medication. Taking medicine for high blood pressure can be dangerous if your continue living life at the pace that got you to where you are now and then sometime you forget to take a pill you could go into cardiac arrest and die. Sound serious? It’s true and it happens every day. Many people forego taking their medication because they can’t afford to or they can afford to and choose to spend the money elsewhere. Don’t make this mistake; it can cost you your life.
3 factors that lead you to high blood pressure: overweight, diet, stress
Losing weight, even as little bit can go a long way to lowering your blood pressure, and get you off of blood pressure medication. Diet and weight tend to go hand in hand, although people at a normal body weight can still have high blood pressure. It’s the diet choices that are causing the problems; what is eaten and portion size. Stress is the number one killer in all disease. It causes the heart to beat against a higher pressure, so it is becoming thicker. When you are stressing out you tend to skip exercise and over eat.
Small adjustments lower your blood pressure
Most of these adjustments can be done with a 24-hour time frame, and with some practice they can become regular habits. For whatever reason your lifestyle got off track and your life depends on you now to take it back.
- Reduce your salt intake to 1,500 mg,
- Slim down,
- Add more fiber to your diet,
- Knock off the junk food and replace it with foods that will lower your blood pressure; fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and lean meats,
- Whittle down your portion size,
- Get some daily activity 30 minutes day 5-6 days a week to increase your heart health and to deter stress,
- Get rid of what is stressing you and take your life back; identify the source and do something about it, look closely at your habits and the people you deal with, learn how to say no.
- Simplify your life.
- Stop smoking, it’s the first thing the doctor tell you to do after you suffer a heart attack. Why wait?
Work with your doctor and be honest about your progress, they are there to work for you not against you. Let them know you are working bringing your life into balance. Let them know if you are willing to make a life time of taking daily medication part of your life or not.
How do you know if you have high blood pressure
High blood pressure is called the “silent killer.” The medical community will tell you there are no symptoms. Those who have high blood pressure will tell you they’ve experienced headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, ringing in the ears and nausea. Most likely you are stressed, sedentary, bloated and weak. Most people don’t seek medical attention until they’ve had a heart attack, heart failure, stroke or mini stroke, kidney failure or loss of vision.
There is also such a thing as low blood pressure. Blood pressure that is too low, you may feel dizzy, tired, fainting and suffer a coma at its worst.
The best way to find out your blood pressure reading is to monitor it. There are plenty of BP machines in drug stores and pharmacies-they can also let you know if the machine is in proper working order, you can also purchase your own monitor-follow the direction and chart, you can get yearly checkups and your doctor can tell you for sure. Either way if you are monitoring it for yourself and you get high readings more than once you will need to visit your doctor.
If you eat salty foods, have an argument, drive in traffic, babysitting a hyper child, or are nervous for example, your blood pressure may measure higher than normal. Try to take your blood pressure readings at the same time each time you do it and be calm. Your blood pressure readings can vary at different times of the day.
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