›› Lower Blood Pressure
High blood pressure,
called ‘hypertension’, is a very common problem for
Americans. Because having a high blood pressure greatly
increases your chances of heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes,
it’s important to take what steps you can to lower your blood
pressure.
Doctors and health professionals agree that exercising and keeping an
active life style is a great place to start to lower blood
pressure. Even 30 minutes of walking a day has been proven to
help lower blood pressure. Probably the greatest single
reason why Americans suffer from high blood pressure more than most
other countries is our overall sedentary lifestyle.
Also, maintaining a healthy weight is a great way to lower blood
pressure. This issue goes hand in hand with
exercise. Ideally, by boosting your workout you’ll
also be helping yourself get to and maintain a healthy body
weight. Be careful what steps you take to lose weight
however! Excessive exercise can put your heart at risk, and
the use of diet pills often raise blood pressure levels
significantly. If you already have heart disease or
dangerously high blood pressure, make sure you exercise lightly and
avoid diet pills. Getting a lower blood pressure is
important, but not worth having a heart attack over!
Another key change you should make right of the bat to help get to a
lower blood pressure is greatly reducing the amount of salt in your
diet. The sodium from salt is well known for causing an
increase in your blood pressure. Products high in sodium
should generally be avoided.
Lowering the amount of alcohol you drink, and quitting smoking
completely will also do wonders to lower blood pressure.
Smoking can wreak havoc to your blood pressure, causing it to spike
erratically, and even moderate amounts of alcohol consumption can
elevate blood pressure throughout the day. Though small
amounts of alcohol may help raising your good cholesterol levels
(effectively lowering your bad cholesterol), it’s a sort of
double edged sword because it comes at the risk of higher blood
pressure.
The most important step you should take to achieve a lower blood
pressure is see a doctor. Your doctor will probably tell you
to do everything discussed here, but will also help you to determine if
you need to be on a medication designed to lower blood
pressure. There are a number of such medications available
today, and if your hypertension is excessive your doctor will probably
start you off on one.
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A Healthy Dose of Good Advice
