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High Blood Pressure Is A Dangerous Condition For Which There Is Usually A Quite Simple Answer
In recent years changes in diet and lifestyle in the majority of western countries have caused a rise in the number of people with high blood pressure.
High blood pressure (otherwise called hypertension, or more properly arterial hypertension) is a serious condition that seldom shows any symptoms and which, if not detected and treated, can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure, arterial aneurysm or renal failure - any one of which is a life-threatening condition.
So precisely what is hypertension and exactly what causes it?
The arteries within your body are continuously filled with blood which exerts a normal 'background' pressure on the walls of the arteries. As your heart pumps newly oxygenated blood around your body it pushes this blood into the arteries which momentarily raises the pressure on the walls of the arteries with each heartbeat. These two pressures are referred to as the systolic pressure (the higher pressure as the heart pumps) and the diastolic pressure (the lower normal or 'background' pressure).
Normal blood pressure varies from one person to the next but, in general, systolic pressure ought to be in the region of 120 mm Hg and diastolic pressure ought to be in the region of 80 mm Hg. This is ordinarily expressed as a pressure of 120/80.
When your blood pressure begins to rise and then stays above 120/80 then you are described as being 'prehypertensive' and, while this is not in itself serious, it is a sign that you could be at risk of developing hypertension and the problems associated with it. If your blood pressure rises to, and stays at, a level of 140/90 or higher you are suffering from hypertension and steps should be taken to reduce your blood pressure.
So what causes your blood pressure to rise and stay elevated?
Well, there are a number of factors at play here and to begin there is a group over which you have little, if any, control. This group of factors includes low birth weight, several genetic factors, some types of diabetes (in particular type 2 diabetes) and your age (with increasing age our arteries have a tendency to become fibrous and lose their elasticity, producing a smaller cross-sectional area through which the blood can flow).
The second group of factors is far more within your control and includes a sedentary lifestyle, high quantities of salt and saturated fats in your diet, excess weight, smoking, alcohol abuse, stress and employment in certain occupations like flying or motorway maintenance.
The majority of these factors are of course treatable and, in many cases, a simple adjustment to your eating habits and the addition of some exercise into your daily plan is all that is necessary to resolve the problem. However, the difficulty is that, without any real symptoms, the vast majority of individuals do not know that they have high blood pressure to start with.
So how can you solve the problem?
Thankfully the answer to this question is fairly simple. All you have to do is to call in at your doctor's office on a regular basis (for most of us a couple of times a year should do the trick) and ask him or her to check your blood pressure. The whole procedure is painless, simple and quick and will provide you with peace of mind and might save your doctor a lot of work, time and expense later on when you are forced to visit his office once high blood pressure has set in.
If you are not all that keen on calling in to see your doctor then an excellent alternative now is to simply check your own blood pressure at home. A large selection of simple to operate and reasonably inexpensive blood pressure monitors are available now, allowing you to check your own health, and that of your whole family, in the comfort and privacy of your own home.
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