High blood
pressure is a serious condition that can lead to heart failure, stroke,
coronary artery disease, kidney failure and many other health problems. It’s a
good idea to know your risks. Although some of the risks are out of our
control, others can be worked on. With May being high blood pressure awareness
month, let’s take a moment to discuss what we can do to help ourselves.
Items out of our control include the physical and hereditary risk factors such as:
- Age – due to the blood vessels losing elasticity
- Gender – men more likely than women early on; women catch up with men later in life
- Race – African-Americans are at a higher risk even at a younger age
- Family history – You have an increased chance if a close blood relative has it
Items we can change are the lifestyle risk factors which include:
- Not enough physical activity
- Eating unhealthy
- Being overweight
- Drinking too much alcohol
- Smoking
- Stress
What can you do to help yourself?
While you can’t
change your age, gender, race or family history, there are some things you can
do for those lifestyle risk factors:
- Get moving. Aim for 30 minutes of activity 5 days a week. Physical activity can do so many good things for you. It can lower your blood pressure, help with weight loss, and reduce stress.
- Improve your diet. It will help manage your blood pressure and make you feel good all over when you eat those fresh fruits and vegetables. Yummy! Watch the sodium that is found in so many processed foods as it can contribute to high blood pressure.
- Manage your weight. You can do this by increasing your activity and improving your diet. See how everything is related?
- Drink alcohol in moderation. Limiting alcohol can help prevent high blood pressure and help in your weight loss efforts. Alcohol has a lot of empty calories. Moderation is considered 2 drinks a day for men and 1 for women.
- Quit smoking. It’s easy to say, but harder to do. I know! (See our November 2016 blog.) There are many tools and resources available online. Also, check with your health plan for what they will do to help.
- Work on that stress. Stress has been known to contribute to the risk factors for high blood pressure. If you have too much stress in your life you may overeat, not get enough physical activity and/or drink too much alcohol. There are many ways to reduce and manage stress include taking care of your mood, giving yourself enough time to get responsibilities completed, being grateful for what you have, and being less of a control freak. You don’t have to do everything or be involved in everything! Let the things go that you can. Say no once in awhile. Life is busy enough. Stop and smell those flowers that are starting to pop outside. You won’t regret it and neither will your blood pressure.
