What do you feel when you have a high blood pressure? How will you know and can you prevent it? Is there a way to control it? What is the best management if you hear your doctor telling you about how high your blood pressure is? Are there foods to help you avoid it? High blood pressure is also known as hypertension and is an increased pressure inside blood vessels due to a disease or unknown cause.
There are signs and symptoms that you can see and feel before your body develops high blood pressure. Be observant to your body’s reaction when you are feeling headaches and dizziness since these are the two things that you should consider the most. If you smoke, have diabetes, are a postmenopausal female, have a family history with high blood pressure and who has elevated cholesterol should always be attentive to these two signs and symptoms. Additionally, a person who is older than 60 can also expect to develop an elevated blood pressure unless a healthy change to lifestyle is made.
Sometimes, patients mistakenly believe that when you have high blood pressure you have an increased amount of blood. The fact is that when you eat foods rich in cholesterol or fats these ingredients tend to cling to the walls of your veins or arteries and over time this decreases the space available for blood to flow, within the blood vessels. When this pathway grows thinner, the pressure of the blood increases as well to push it through. The normal range of blood pressure is 120 mmHg systolic and 80 mmHg diastolic. Hypertension will show a reading higher in one or both of these readings. Some of the signs and symptoms that patients may feel are fatigue, palpitation, angina, dyspnea, headache and visual disturbance. However, an individual may have a silent hypertension, meaning they have no signs or symptoms. Naturally, this could be dangerous.
You can easily control an elevated blood pressure through taking prescribde medications or changing your lifestyle to healthy habits such as eating appropriate foods that are low in cholesterol, fats and sugar. When you discipline yourself to continuously eat healthy foods for a specific period of time or for the rest of your life, you can normalize blood pressure and avoid the risk of having diseases associated with hypertension. These diseases include coronary artery disease, cardiovascular disease or stroke, heart failure, renal disease and other life threatening diseases.
In addition to dietary lifestyle changes, you should also avoid smoking, reduce alcohol intake, minimize caffeine intake and control salt intake which can further raise blood pressure. Moreover, doing regular exercise for weight control is also important since obesity is associated with high blood pressure. Avoid stressful environments. When you feel any of the signs and symptoms of high blood pressure mention above do not hesitate to call your primary health practitioner.
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