How To Treat High Or Low Blood Pressure

It is a commonly known fact that a healthy lifestyle is an essential part of a healthy life. Same is true if you want to maintain a normal blood pressure.

Even if you are highly dependent on those pills and medicines to treat your blood pressure disorder, your lifestyle pattern in large will determine the success of the medications. And if you succeed in maintaining a healthy lifestyle, you might not even find the need of any medication soon. A controlled blood pressure will help you live longer and prevent other health related problems like heart and kidney failure. Some of the lifestyle changes that are necessary to maintain a healthy blood pressure levels are:

Lose That Extra Weight
Increasing weight is a very common factor leading to high blood pressure. More weight amounts to higher blood pressure. Besides this, losing weight increases the effectiveness of the hypertension medications. And weight can only be maintained if you have a proper dietary habit and a regular exercising regime.

Exercise Regularly
For a controlled blood pressure, physical activity should be made a part of your overall strategy. Exercising helps you to fight your pre-hypertension and prevents it from taking the shape of full-fledged hypertension.

Eat Healthy
The old saying “You are what you eat” is an apt one. Till long it had remained a myth with the people that eating habits do not have any role in the maintenance of your blood pressure, but with new studies coming up they have been proved wrong. It has been shown that you can reduce your blood pressure if your diet is rich in fruits, grains, dairy products with low fats and vegetables.

Reducing Sodium Intake
Sodium has an active role to play in your blood pressure. More Sodium in the body means, more amount of blood pressure. So from now on the next time you munch on your favorite processed food, just be a little more careful. But if you are unable to do that, increasing the potassium amount in your diet can counter the effect of sodium on blood pressure.

Limit The Alcohol Consumption
Alcohol has both the good and bad effects on your health. The good is that it prevents the possibility of a heart attack and clogging of arteries. The bad is that excessive alcohol consumption reduces these good effects on the body, thus raising the blood pressure levels. Apart from this, excessive alcohol intake also reduces the effectiveness of the blood pressure lowering medications on the body.

Avoid Tobacco Products
Tobacco poses the biggest threat to your blood pressure. And if you are a constant smoker then there is a possibility that even medication won’t solve your blood pressure problems. Apart from this there are certain chemicals present in tobacco that have adverse effects on the arteries, damaging them and causing fluid retention in the body.

Control Your Caffeine Intake
Till now the role that caffeine plays in blood pressure is debatable. Caffeinated beverages increase the blood flow in the arteries. But it is also said that if you consume such products on a regular basis then the effect of caffeine on the blood pressure diminishes. Therefore the effect of caffeine still remains ambiguous.

Related Blogs

• What is normal blood pressure and makes it depending on the movement and other activities?
• What are the Causes of High Blood Pressure? | High Blood Pressure Diet

The word ‘blood’ has plenty of significance! Among all the parts of the body, the status of blood is the most eminent! It touches and is ever in contact with all the parts of the body, at all times! In other words, it is omnipresent.

We call our close relations, ‘blood relations’! Why not nose relations or ear relations?

Any damage to any part of the body, and the first thing that comes out is blood!

Blood can be compared to a super power! Super power influences the political activity anywhere in the world! Similarly, blood can influence physical activity anywhere in the body. Therefore, any severe damage to the quality and quantity of blood becomes fatal!

One such damage to the blood is blood pressure, which could either be high or low.

For lowering high blood pressure, many ‘antihypertensive’ medications are available in the market. A sub-category of antihypertensives, known as ‘beta blockers’ are used to reduce the heart rate. The intention of this medication is to reduce the output of blood from the heart.

One more category of antihypertensives are ‘nerve inhibitors’. The sympathetic nerves, the respective duty-allotted nerves go from the brain to all parts of the body, arteries included. They can cause the arteries to constrict, raising the blood pressure levels. This type of drug reduces the blood pressure by prohibiting these nerves from constricting the arteries.

Some more drugs are: Vasodilators, angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, angiotensin II receptor blockers and calcium antagonists (calcium channel blockers).

Medication is not the be all and end all of blood pressure treatment. Certain lifestyle changes could also help you maintain a stable blood pressure. Diet and exercise also play an important role in controlling both high and low blood pressures. While treating blood pressure, self-medication can be dangerous. These drugs sometimes cause side-effects such as strokes or heart attacks. Keeping your weight under control is one of the sure-shot methods of controlling blood pressure.

Apples are considered invaluable in the treatment of high blood pressure. The apple diet has a rapid and considerable diuretic effect which causes increased urination, thus bringing the blood pressure down to normal. It also relieves the kidneys by reducing the supply of sodium chloride to a minimum. In addition, the high level of potassium in apples lowers the sodium level in the tissues.

And last but not the least, try to live a tension-free life, as it has a lot of advantages. This would help you to control your blood pressure levels. Now, you may ask, how to start living such a life?

Well, you can start by starting!

Related Blogs

• Which antihypertensive drug to use after a diuretic: an ACE-inhibitor or beta-blocker seems preferable to a calcium channel blocker « NPCi blog
• » Blood Pressure Treatment – Five Great Expert Tips To Lower Blood Pressure Readings » IQonHealth – Articles and Reviews on Heartburn, Alternative Herbal Remedies, Weight Loss…