October 29th, 2008
If you are concerned about having high blood pressure in the future, then look out for the following concerns:
1. Consistency: Is there a repeating pattern? A repeating pattern would be that over 30 percent in each generation developed high blood pressure, going through both parents and all grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. Ideally, you could trace back to great grandparents, great uncles, and possibly even their siblings. Search for patterns of several men or women in each family with high blood pressure.
2. Excess weight and physical fitness: Does a pattern of obesity show up? How about fitness? Do people who stay fit get high blood pressure?
3. Alcohol: Do heavy drinkers in the family get high blood pressure?
Does heredity mean you are fated to have high blood pressure? Absolutely not! In fact, heredity is not even an excuse any longer. In high blood pressure, the hereditary tendency is not a firm trait like eye color. It is simply a warning flag that says, “Take care of your body and everything will be just fine.” Basically, if you’ve inherited the tendency, you’re lucky because you know the boundary lines within which you must live.
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October 25th, 2008
Diagnosing high blood pressure is different for children. Size matters. Measuring blood pressure in the smallest infants and children with a stethoscope is difficult because the sounds are so hard to hear in their tiny arms. To overcome this problem, pediatricians use Doppler ultrasound instruments in place of a stethoscope to take blood pressure in the smallest arteries.
Doppler was an Austrian who discovered that sound changed its pitch when it comes toward you as compared to when it’s going away from you. If a sound wave is directed to an artery and a blood pressure cuff cuts off the blood flow, it bounces back with one sound wave appearance. When blood begins to flow through the artery as the cuff is deflated, the sound wave has a different appearance (this is the systolic blood pressure).
As the cuff is opened further, the flow reaches its peak and the sound wave changes again (the diastolic blood pressure). The Doppler ultrasound instrument looks like a pencil held over the artery. It sends out sound waves that are altered by blood flow. The same “pencil” is connected to a machine that amplifies the altered sound wave of the artery, so you hear a distinct difference as blood flow starts.
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October 22nd, 2008
You may wonder why it’s so important to prevent high blood pressure. Why not simply wait for it to develop and then treat it? Below are 5 reasons why it’s better to act early instead of later.
1. Better odds: Generally, the younger you are when you try to change your lifestyle, the better your chances of succeeding. The longer you’re involved in an unhealthful habit, the more difficult it is for you to change that habit.
2. Reduced health risks: Even if you’re able to control your high blood pressure after the disease develops, you still have a higher risk of a heart attack or stroke than people who don’t have high blood pressure.
3. Control difficulties: Managing high blood pressure isn’t always easy. Only about a quarter of Americans with high blood pressure have their condition under control.
4. Side effects: Medications to treat high blood pressure can sometimes cause side effects, such as fatigue, headaches, constipation, a nagging cough and loss of sex drive.
5. Cost: Treating high blood pressure typically includes more frequent trips to your doctor. Plus, you may need to take medication daily.
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October 20th, 2008
1. Oral contraceptives, when they contained higher amounts of estrogen, were notorious for raising blood pressure. The newer preparations with less estrogen are much better in that respect. You still should have your blood pressure checked before you start taking an oral contraceptive and have it checked every so often after you’re on them. Estrogen taken for menopause, however, may actually lower blood pressure.
2. Some antacids contain an abundance of salt, which you know doesn’t help your blood pressure. Check the label before you decide to buy a particular antacid. If you’re taking in 900 milligrams of salt each time your stomach aches, you aren’t doing your blood pressure any favors. You can find plenty of good choices, such as various calcium containing antacids and magnesium-containing antacids, so read the label to see what you’re getting
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October 19th, 2008
High blood pressure results from many factors, but there’s always one common denominator: excessive salt and an incorrect balance between sodium and potassium. You must understand these two minerals.
Potassium and sodium are the body’s two major electrolytes, nutrients essential for nerve conduction, energy production, cell integrity, and many other functions of the body. Both conduct electricity. Salt (sodium chloride) dissolves to form the electrolytes sodium and chloride. Pure distilled water does not conduct electricity, but water containing salt does because sodium and chloride are ions, each containing an electric charge.
Each body cell in every tissue and organ is composed of and bathed in fluid. The fluid both inside and outside the cell contains many materials; most important among them are sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and chloride. The intracellular fluid contains more potassium than sodium, so potassium is the predominant electrolyte inside the cell. The fluid bathing the cell contains more sodium than potassium, so sodium is the predominant electrolyte in the extra-cellular fluid. Chloride complements both electrolytes. A deficiency of either sodium or potassium is generally not an issue because we can get all we need from food. However, most people get far too much sodium from food.
Having the correct balance of potassium and sodium enables cells to carry out their functions. For example, cells that line the stomach must produce acid and digestive enzymes to break down food. The production of these essential factors requires energy. If those cells don’t have the correct potassium sodium balance, they can’t produce those factors. Nerve impulse conduction (which causes you to pull your hand from a hot stove and “tells” your heart to beat) also requires the right ratio of sodium and potassium to function properly. The ratio of potassium to sodium in our body is critical, and when it becomes seriously distorted, the consequences can be life threatening. Inadequate dietary potassium, often resulting from fad diets, has been implicated many times in heart attacks.
Your body maintains a ratio of about three parts potassium to one part sodium. This ratio facilitates all the many functions that each cell must perform. This ratio is not unique to humans and is found throughout the animal kingdom. In contrast, a much higher ratio of potassium to sodium is found in the plant kingdom, 10 to 20 or more parts potassium to one part sodium. Plants don’t have, among other things, a nervous system and the need to transmit nerve impulses and so require less sodium. This characteristic of plants is to our benefit; making vegetables a substantial part of your diet can help balance excess sodium.
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October 16th, 2008
Our blood pressure is regulated from minute to minute by nerves. At specific locations in the walls of the large arteries, special sensors “measure” blood
pressure by responding to the amount of stretch in the walls of the arteries. An important location of these sensors is the carotid sinus, which is in the arteries that run up the neck to supply the head with blood.
When blood pressure increases for any reason, these sensors send nerve signals to the blood pressure regulating center located in the lower portion of the brain. In response to the nerve signals, the blood pressure regulating center sends out nerve signals that slow the heart and dilate the arterioles. The lower output of blood by the heart and the lower peripheral resistance to blood flow both result in lowering the arterial blood pressure back toward normal. By rubbing the carotid sinus area on the side of your neck near your voice box, you can stimulate these receptors and cause a quick (but temporary) reduction of your blood pressure.
Another example of this reflex occurs when you suddenly sit or stand up after lying down. Gravity pulls the blood downward, lowering the blood pressure in the carotid sinus in your neck. If the carotid sinus reflex didn’t act promptly, sending out nerve impulses (over sympathetic nerves) to increase heart output and constrict the arterioles, you would faint from the decreased flow of blood to your head.
The sympathetic nervous system is the portion of the autonomic (involuntary) nervous system that has as its main function the preparation of our bodies for emergency situations. The sympathetic (adrenergic) nervous system sends nerve signals to the blood pressure regulating center, telling it to raise the blood pressure, which the center accomplishes by sending signals over sympathetic nerves that go to the heart and blood vessels. This system becomes active when we are frightened, preparing us to run away or to fight by increasing our heart rate and reducing the blood flow to the stomach, intestines, and skin.
Some cases of primary hypertension appear to be associated with increased sympathetic nervous system activity. This could be partly the result of a decrease in the voltage across the surface membrane of the sympathetic nerve cells caused by accumulation of sodium and depletion of potassium inside the cell, which could be helped by dietary changes. The decreased membrane voltage of the sympathetic nerve cells would cause them to fire off nerve signals more often, thus raising blood pressure. Increased sympathetic nervous system activity can also result from the psychological stress caused by our reaction to unpleasant situations. In obese people, the stimulation of sympathetic nerves by elevated insulin levels may be a compensatory mechanism to limit weight gain.
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October 14th, 2008
If you’re thinking you don’t have to worry about cholesterol because you don’t have heart trouble, you may want to think again. About 25 percent of American adults over age 20 have blood cholesterol levels that are considered high. More than half of all Americans have levels that are borderline-high.
Eating the typical American diet of fatty meats, processed cold cuts, dairy products, fried foods, eggs and commercially baked breads, cakes and cookie, can lead just about anyone down the high-cholesterol path. Only a small fraction of the population can eat high-fat diets and have low cholesterol. You don’t need to eat any cholesterol. Your body makes all it needs. Any extra you get is either eliminated from your body or is deposited in your arteries. That’s when problems begin.
Of course, even if your cholesterol is a little high, it doesn’t mean you’ll have a heart attack, but elevated cholesterol is one of the main risk factors. And if your cholesterol isn’t high, you may want to take steps to keep it that way. Fortunately, that’s fairly easy to do. Most people can lower or maintain their cholesterol just by making a few additions and subtractions to their diets.
Strangely enough, eating cholesterol doesn’t raise blood cholesterol as much as eating a type of fat called saturated fat. Like cholesterol, saturated fat is found mainly in animal products, like cheese, butter, cream, whole milk, ice cream, lard and marbled meats. Some vegetable oils - palm oil, palm kernel oil, coconut oil and cocoa butter - also are high in saturated fat.
These oils are used in commercially baked goods, coffee creamers and nondairy whipped toppings, so read the labels. Since eating cholesterol also can raise blood cholesterol levels, go easy on egg yolks, which contain 213 mg of cholesterol, and on organ meats, such as liver.
Unsaturated fats, both polyunsaturated and monounsaturated, have been shown to reduce blood cholesterol levels. Polyunsaturated fats come from plant and vegetable sources, such as cottonseed, soybean, corn and safflower. Sunflower and sesame seeds, walnuts and pecans also are high in polyunsaturates. Polyunsaturated fats are usually soft or liquid at room temperature.
Monounsaturated fats, like olive oil, have been found to lower high blood pressure also. Increasing your monounsaturated fats while decreasing your saturated fats should help lower your blood pressure naturally.
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October 11th, 2008
Before you begin a new exercise program to help decrease your high blood pressure (or any other disease), have your doctor measure your blood cholesterol and, if possible, blood triglycerides. In addition, you really should get a stress test if you:
* Are over 40.
* Have a high blood cholesterol level.
* Have at least one other major coronary risk factor, such as being seriously overweight, smoke cigarettes, have diabetes mellitus, or have a family history of coronary disease by age fifty.
* Have known cardiovascular or lung or metabolic disease
By “stress test,” we are referring to a multistage stress test that utilizes a treadmill or a stationary exercise bicycle. In the multistage test, your electrocardiogram (EKG) and blood pressure can be taken continuously while you exercise and as the level of exercise is increased.
An EKG is a tracing of electrical activity of the heart. You may have already had one taken at rest. If a resting EKG shows abnormal electrical activity, you need careful consultation with your doctor about whether and how you should begin an exercise program. If coronary artery disease has caused your heart any problems, a resting EKG may show signs of this.
However, a resting EKG often fails to show signs of coronary disease and so provides no assurance that you are not about to have a heart attack. On the other hand, abnormalities in the EKG are much more likely to show up during exercise, so a properly conducted treadmill EKG (the stress test) offers much better evidence.
The treadmill stress test also gives some idea of how hard you can exercise safely. Let’s say you get your heart rate up to 150 and the electrical tracing (EKG) is still normal. Although it is not a guarantee, that provides an indication that as long as your heart rate is not higher than 150 when you exercise, you are unlikely to have a heart attack.
But unfortunately, even the exercise EKG isn’t infallible. Your coronary arteries could be almost two-thirds closed with cholesterol deposits and you might still pass the stress test - especially if it is not conducted according to the guidelines of the American College of Sports Medicine. However, among the simple and safe methods, it’s the best we have for evaluating your cardiac health.
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October 10th, 2008
Of the entire drug classes, the only one that has consistently reduced the illness and death associated with high blood pressure when it’s the first treatment is the diuretic class and specifically the thiazide diuretics.
Diuretics, also known as “water pills,” lower blood pressure by forcing the body to rid itself of salt and water through the kidneys into the urine. Depending on the place in the kidneys where they’re active, diuretics rid the body of more or less salt and water. However, after a couple of months, the body overcomes the reduction in body fluids. At this point, it’s a reduction in the resistance to blood flow that accounts for the ongoing fall in blood pressure. Depending on where the medication is acting, diuretics are divided into different groups as follows:
1. Thiazide and thiazidelike diuretic group: Although they’re not the most effective drugs for ridding the body of excess salt and water, the most effective group for lowering blood pressure is the thiazide and thiazidelike diuretic group.
2. Loop diuretics: A second group, the loop diuretics, acts at the thick ascending limb of the loop of Henie, part of the filtering mechanism of the kidneys. These drugs have a potent effect on salt and water elimination.
3. Potassium-sparing diuretics: A third group, the potassium-sparing diuretics function at the late distal tubule and the collecting tubule of the nephron. The result is only a mild increase in sodium excretion and chloride excretion but a tendency to reduce the excretion of potassium. Because the other diuretics cause potassium loss, the potassium-sparing diuretics are important for maintaining body potassium.
4. Aldosterone-antagonist group: The final group of useful diuretics is the aldosterone-antagonist group. In the United States, only one is currently available, spironolactone. This group blocks the action of aldosterone, a natural hormone that causes salt and water retention. If its action is blocked, more salt and water is excreted into the urine while potassium loss is reduced. These drugs could be included in the potassium-sparing group, but they go about lowering blood pressure in an altogether different manner than the potassium sparing group – they deactivate.
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October 7th, 2008
When you play with fire, you get burned. When you smoke, you run the risk of getting burned inside and out. Whether tobacco is smoked, chewed, or taken in by any other means, the nicotine in the tobacco raises the blood pressure. The more you smoke, the higher the nicotine level is in your blood, and the higher your blood pressure. This accounts to a large extent for the great increase in brain attacks, heart attacks, and pain in the legs due to poor circulation in smokers, sometimes leading to amputation.
Nicotine raises your blood pressure by constricting your blood vessels. This occurs because the oxygen in your blood decreases and because nicotine directly stimulates the production of a hormone, epinephrine (also known as adrenaline), in the adrenal gland. Epinephrine raises blood pressure. After tobacco use raises blood pressure, you’re at risk of all the medical consequences of high blood pressure, not to mention diseases associated with smoking, such as mouth and lung cancer.
Numerous studies have shown that smoking or chewing tobacco raises blood pressure and that when you stop using tobacco products, your blood pressure falls. The latest such study in the Journal of Hypertension (February 2002) comes from France. Out of 12,417 men who were current smokers, previous smokers, and never smokers, current smokers had the highest prevalence of high blood pressure. Previous smokers had a lower prevalence with the highest rate of high blood pressure in those who had recently stopped and had smoked for the longest time. Those who had never started smoking had the lowest prevalence of high blood pressure. Do you need more evidence than that?
Even though this article is extremely brief on the subject, you have enough evidence of the dangers of tobacco and enough helpful advice to quit using tobacco that you would have to be really careless not to stop immediately, if not sooner. Drugs that have caused a small fraction of the illness and death that tobacco can be blamed for have been taken off the market. So why are cigarettes still sold legally and advertised in many of our most prestigious magazines? The answer to that question lies squarely at the feet of government and the millions of dollars spent on cigarettes that are turned around and used to influence that government.
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