In recent years changes inside diet and lifestyle inside a lot of western societies have led to an boost in the number of citizens suffering from high blood pressure.
High blood pressure (otherwise known because hypertension, or more correctly arterial hypertension) is a serious situation which rarely carries several symptoms and which, if not detected and treated, be able to lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure, arterial aneurysm or renal failure – all of which are series life-threatening conditions.
So simply what is high blood pressure and what causes it?
The arteries of your body and constantly filled using blood which exerts a accepted “background” pressure on the walls of the arteries. Because the heart pumps freshly oxygenated blood around the body it forces this blood into the arteries momentarily raising the pressure exerted on the walls of the arteries during all beat of the heart. These two pressures are known since the systolic pressure (the higher pumping pressure of the heart) and the diastolic pressure (the lower “background” pressure).
Expected levels of blood pressure vary from individual to individual but, on average, systolic pressure be supposed to be around 120 mm Hg (millimeters of mercury measured on a manometer) and diastolic pressure should be about 80 mm Hg. This is ordinarily expressed as a blood pressure of 120/80.
If your blood pressure starts to rise and remains at a level higher than 120/80 then you are described because being “prehypertensive” and, as this is not serious inside itself, it is an indication that you can be at risk of developing hypertension and the problems associated with it. Once your blood pressure reaches, and maintains, a level of 140/90 or over you are said to be suffering from hypertension and action needs to be taken to decrease your blood pressure.
But what causes your blood pressure to rise and remain elevated?
Healthy, there are any factors at play here and the first is a group over which you have little, if several, control. This group includes a low birth weight, a kind of genetic factors, certain forms of diabetes (inside particular multiplicity 2 diabetes) and your age (as we grow older our arteries tend to become fibrous and lose their elasticity, resulting in a smaller cross-sectional area through which the blood be able to circulation).
The second group of factors is much extra within your control and includes leading a sedentary lifestyle, high levels of salt and/or saturated fats inside the diet, being overweight, smoking, alcohol abuse, stress and working inside certain occupations such as flying or motorway maintenance, which involves exposure to long periods of high level roadway noise.
The vast majority of these factors are of course treatable and, in lots of cases, a simple adjustment to your diet and the addition of some form of practice into your daily routine is every that is needed to solve the problem. The difficulty however is that, without a few real symptoms, most people just don’t know that they are suffering from high blood pressure in the first place.
So how do you solve the problem?
Fortunately the answer to this question is very easy. All you require to do is to pop into your doctor’s office on a common basis (for most of us a couple of times a year will do the trick) and ask the general practitioner, or apply nurse, to check your blood pressure. The entire process is painless, simple and quickly and will give you peace of mind and perhaps save your general practitioner many era, work and expense later on when you are forced to present yourself at his office once hypertension has set in.
If, like most people, you are not so keen on visiting your physician then an magnificent alternative today is to only monitor your own blood pressure at home. A wide size of easy to operate and relatively inexpensive monitors are available today, allowing you to keep an eye on your own health, and that of your family, in the comfort and privacy of your own home.