If you’ve discovered that you have high blood pressure, you probably want to get it lowered as soon as possible. Thankfully, there are many things that you can do to achieve that.
Collecting a blood pressure reading is one thing that happens every single time you go to the doctor, whether for a check-up or because you’re sick. Even if you are injured, they always check your blood pressure during triage. The reason for this is that it gives a lot of good information and indications to the doctor about your health.
Over the years, doctors have developed averages and tables to help them determine what is the normal and healthy range for individuals based on their age. You can end up with high blood pressure, which puts you at risk for stroke and other cardiovascular diseases.
If you have high blood pressure, it limits the help your doctor can give you due to the other problems. Therefore, likely the first thing your doctor will want to do for you is to help you bring your blood pressure under control – either naturally or with medication, depending on your situation.
What Causes High Blood Pressure
Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is often called the silent killer because many people don’t even realize they have a problem before it strikes. When you have high blood pressure, your readings will mean that your systolic pressure reads over 140 and your diastolic pressure is reading over 90.
This can signal a problem that should be monitored and dealt with. Let’s look at some of the causes and how they might want you to deal with it. Because here’s the thing – most of the time doctors do not know exactly why your blood pressure is high. They look at the obvious issues and then work their way around those.
Excess Sodium
Most of us eat too much sodium (from salt). So, the first thing you may want to look at is how much you’re having and try to find substitutes. For example, instead of adding salt, can you add celery or celery flakes? How important is the salt in that situation? If you can avoid it then so much the better.
Your Age
Sometimes it’s just a matter of getting older; your systems may not work as well and aren’t regulating as well as they were before. As you get older, your blood pressure will get higher. Having said that, if you have a bad diet, you may want to rein it in. If you smoke, quit. If you drink, try being more moderate or quitting.
Sleep Apnea
This causes you to breathe incorrectly at night while sleeping, sometimes not breathing. This can cause sudden death and is a sign that you have health issues and is usually accompanied by high blood pressure. You can sometimes help yourself by losing weight in this case. But some thin people have it too, so be sure to go to a health care professional if you have this condition.
Stress
If you’re experiencing a lot of stress, in some people that can translate to higher blood pressure. If you know you’re having some form of known stress, tell your doctor about it. Maybe you can practice some meditation or other stress-reducing activities.
Obesity
We know people get tired of hearing it, but being an unhealthy weight is a danger to your health. You’re more likely to have high blood pressure if you are overweight, sedentary and make poor lifestyle choices.
Losing just ten percent of your body weight or at least trying to get below the obesity mark to only “overweight” can make a big difference. Whether you like it or not, the insurance company charts are best to go by in terms of measuring your own health and weight.
Being Sedentary
Lack of intentional exercise can lead to weight gain and cause problems with your blood pressure. This can be very damaging to your cardiovascular system, your lungs, and your heart. To end this cycle, start slow by walking just a few minutes a day.
You honestly only need a daily regimen of 30 minutes of fast walking a day to get enough exercise to maintain your health.
Overusing Drugs and Alcohol
We don’t mean to rain on your parade, but drinking alcohol in excess is bad. Try to limit it to one to two drinks a week, and don’t drink ten drinks one night and average it out with the rest of the week. Binge drinking is especially bad for you.
Of course, also give up illegal drugs entirely and avoid taking pain meds and other permanent meds if you can and your doctor agrees. And, of course, don’t smoke. Not even cannabis. Find other ways to use it if you do use it for your health.
Poor Diet
Today, it’s harder than ever to eat healthily. You have so many people saying low carb is best, or high carb is best. Who’s right? The truth is, eating as much unprocessed food as you can to replace all the processed food is what will make you healthy – whether it’s veggies or meat.
Try to drink plenty of water and eat when you’re hungry. Choose healthy, unprocessed food. Some nutritional deficiencies can cause hypertension too, such as not having enough potassium.
Illnesses and Diseases
There are illnesses that can cause hypertension too such as Cushing’s syndrome, diabetes, thyroid problems, and kidney disease.
When you have high blood pressure but no underlying diseases as a cause identified, ensure that you get more tests done and don’t just treat the symptom without figuring out the cause. It’s important to know how and why so you can treat the right cause.
Medication Side Effects
There are numerous drugs that can cause high blood pressure. If you take any drugs and get high blood pressure, figure out how you can eliminate or replace that drug. Some culprits are nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, over-the-counter decongestants, antidepressants, and hormonal birth control.
The important thing is to determine the cause. The cause is important because you want to treat the cause and not just guess. But in general, you can always help yourself with your high blood pressure by improving your diet and exercising more.
What Happens at the Doctor’s Office
When you go to the doctor, as you know they always take your vitals. Part of that is your blood pressure. They use a cuff and manually take the pressure, or they use a machine that will take your pressure reading.
If the doctor detects a high reading, they may have you change positions or use a different machine. Depending on how high it is, they may send you home with a medication prescription or they might send you right to the hospital. Here are the figures:
- Normal: Less than 120 / 80
- Prehypertension: 120-139 / 80- 89
- High blood pressure stage 1: 140-159 / 90-99
- High blood pressure stage 2: 160 and above / 100 and above
The goal of your doctor is to reduce your blood pressure to a normal level. They will prescribe medication, exercise, and a healthy diet. Some people’s blood pressure can only be controlled with a prescription and you may have to take it for the rest of your life.
For these people, this may be a genetic condition and not due to an outside reason that you can fix with diet and exercise.
Medication Options
If they decide to prescribe medications to reduce your blood pressure, they may try diuretics first. These remove most of the extra water and sodium from your body and may help lower blood pressure as a result. If you’re swelling and retaining fluid, this may be the first option your doctor chooses.
The doctor may decide to prescribe an ACE inhibitor which will also help some people with rising blood pressure. Some name brands of ACE inhibitors are Vasotec, Prinivil, Zestril, and Altace.
There are also angiotensin II receptor blockers which relax blood vessels. Some of the brand names are Diovan and Cozaar. Other doctors prefer calcium channel blockers like Norvasc, Tiazac, Procardia, and others. For some people, they may even prescribe beta blockers which influence adrenaline and can help your heart beat slower.
There are side effects from these types of drugs such as a cough, rash, dizziness, decreased ability to taste, sore throat, mouth sores, fever and more. You could even develop high potassium levels which are life-threatening as it can lead to kidney failure.
The medications that you and your doctor choose or don’t choose depends on your overall health history and whether it’s safe enough to try diet and exercise first or whether it’s best to get the blood pressure down first. This all depends on how high your pressure is and what the doctor believes is the cause.
Diet and Exercise Options
If you have no other health issues and your high blood pressure is not too high, your doctor may choose to try diet and exercise options first. This is the easiest and least risky way to lower your blood pressure and improve your overall health. Probably most of the issue is diet and exercise if you are also overweight.
Have your doctor send you to a nutritionist to help you adjust your diet. Instead of using the scale or BMI, you can use waist circumference which is really the simplest way to determine potential health. As a man, your waist for most people should not be more than 40 inches.
For a woman, it is 35 inches. It doesn’t really matter how tall you are (but of course if you are an exception in terms of being way more than average size due to a genetic issue, that’s different).
Eat less sodium. You’d be shocked at how much sodium (from salt) we’re eating. Many people can do it forever and never suffer any consequences. But if you have high blood pressure or are borderline, start with eating less sodium.
You can find ways to get good flavor in your food without adding table salt. You can use dulse flakes, celery flakes and so forth to help.
Lower the amount of alcohol you drink too. It might be enough to switch from that beer to a glass of wine. A glass of wine is a much smaller serving in that 5 ounces of wine is a serving. Red wine has protective effects too.
Start exercising regularly. You want to try to do some form of intentional exercise each day for a total of 150 minutes a week of moderate to high intensity walking. That’s only about 30 minutes a day.
That’s easy for most people to do by parking farther away, taking stairs instead of elevators, and going for a fast walk after eating. Aerobic exercise is the best type for dealing with high blood pressure and other cardiovascular issues.
You can start slow. If you all you can do right now is a walk to and from your mailbox, do it. Then tomorrow do it twice, and the next day three times, and finally walk down your block and so forth. Work up to a walking speed of about a mile in 15 minutes.
This honestly is not that hard to do for most people who are relatively healthy. Talk to your doctor about adding walking to your daily regime.
When you can walk for 30 minutes without feeling like you’re dying, you can start adding in other types of exercise to beef it up. For example, instead of going to the movies and getting junk and sitting more, go play miniature golf if the weather is nice. Go for a bike ride. Go skating. Go skiing. Go swimming. Do fun things and be active.
Other Ways to Reduce Your Blood Pressure
There are other things besides diet and exercise that can affect your blood pressure. Some are very important and honestly can help you more than almost anything. You do need to worry about your diet and get some exercise, so don’t even think about not paying attention to that. But here are some other ways you can reduce your blood pressure.
Stop Smoking
This is one of the most important things you can do for your health. Smoking is a danger to your health and causes cancer, stroke, heart disease and a lot of other health problems. If you quit smoking, within just a short period of time you can repair your health and make a big difference. Go to a smoking cessation program to ensure your success.
Use Less Caffeine
Caffeine can raise your blood pressure and your pulse. For some people, it’s worse. If you can give up caffeine you can lower your blood pressure a lot. You may even find that you feel funny after drinking caffeine. If you do, you’ll want to start slowly giving it up.
There are bad side effects to giving up caffeine overnight, so try to do it slowly and find something healthy to replace it with.
Lower Your Stress Level
Everyone has stress. But for some, stress will affect their health in more ways than most people think. Stress is really a killer and it should be managed as much as possible. You can manage stress by taking care of yourself.
You’d be shocked at how much eating right, exercising, staying hydrated and cutting back on alcohol and stopping smoking can do for stress. But you may also want to meditate, color, or do other things to help deal with your stress.
Finally, it’s important if you have high blood pressure to follow your doctor’s advice to monitor your blood pressure at home and to get support from others. Your family and friends are going to be happy to help you make a change in your lifestyle so that you can be healthy and around a lot longer.
High blood pressure is a dangerous condition that can be a precursor to stroke, heart disease, diabetes, hardening of the arteries, kidney disease, vision issues, and major complications of pregnancy. Many of these are life-threatening or lead to deadly conditions.
Fortunately, there are many ways to bring blood pressure down before any of these illnesses occur.
