High Blood Pressure Prevention

High blood pressure is a risk factor for heart disease, stroke, dementia, congestive heart failure, kidney disease, and, blindness.

However the good news is, the correct treatment can control elevated blood pressure. 

Everyday life changes can prevent and control high blood pressure, and these include changes such as

• Losing weigh if obese (losing even 10 lbs can help).
• Increased physical activity (walking 30 minutes per day).
• Following a healthy eating plan, which emphasizes a variety of fruits, vegetables, and low fat dairy foods?
• Choosing and preparing foods with less salt and sodium content
• Drinking less caffeine beverages or at least in moderation.
• Drinking alcoholic beverages in moderation or better still cutting them out completely.
• Stopping smoking

A few tips for reducing sodium in your diet include

• Buying fresh, simple frozen or tinned food and vegetables with no salt added.
• Using fresh poultry, fish, and lean meat, rather than tinned or processed.
• Using different herbs and spices, and salt-free seasoning blends in cooking and at the table.
• Cooking rice, pasta, and hot cereals without adding any salt.
• Cutting back on instant or flavoured rice, pasta, and cereal mixes, which usually have added salt, is always a good idea.
• Try choosing "convenience" foods lower in sodium and salt.
• Reduce the intake of frozen dinners, pizza, packaged mixes, tinned soups or broths, and salad dressings because these often have loads of sodium added to them.
• Rinse tinned foods, such as tuna fish, to remove as much of the sodium as you can.
• If it's available, try buying low- or reduced-sodium, or no-salt-added versions of your favourite foods.
• Make a habit of choosing ready-to-eat breakfast cereals that are lower in sodium.

Get into the habit of reading the Food Label on all the food that you buy.  Food labels are brilliant in assisting you to choose foods lower in sodium, as well as calories, saturated fat, total fat, sugar, and cholesterol.

Maintaining a healthy sensible weight is also very important.  Being obese increases your risk of developing high blood pressure a lot.

In fact, blood pressure rises as body weight increases.  So losing just 10 pounds can lower your blood pressure significantly. Also losing weight has the maximum effect on blood pressure for those people already overweight and experiencing hypertension.

Being overweight or obese are also risk factors for heart disease.  They increase your chance for developing high blood cholesterol and diabetes, which are two major risk factors for heart disease.

Two key measures are used to determine if someone is overweight.  These are the body mass index, or BMI, and waist circumference.

BMI relates weight to height.  It gives an approximation of total body fat and that's what increases the risk of obesity-related diseases.  Overweight is defined as a BMI of 25 to 29.9; obesity is defined as a BMI equal to or more than 30.

But BMI alone may overestimate body fat or inaccurately estimate total body fat in muscular persons or those losing muscle.  For example, older persons have often lost muscle mass and may have more fat for a given BMI than a younger persons. 

So, waist measurements are often checked as well.  Another reason is that too much body fat in the stomach area also increases the risk for disease.  A waist measurement of more than 35 inches in women and more than 40 inches in men is considered high

Stress can make blood pressure go up for a while, and it has been thought to contribute to high blood pressure.  However, the long-term effects of stress are unclear.  Stress management techniques do not seem to prevent high blood pressure. 

However, such techniques may have other benefits, such as making you feel better or helping you to control over-eating.

Caffeine in coffee as well as in other drinks, such as tea and sodas, raises blood pressure provisionally.  So unless you are sensitive to it you should be able to continue to have drinks that contain caffeine. However, it is best to moderate your intake of caffeine if possible.

If lifestyle changes alone are not effective in keeping your blood pressure controlled, there are now a wide range of blood pressure medications that can help you.