BLOOD PRESSURE AND PLAN TO CONTROL IT ???

Blood pressure is the pressure of the blood in your blood vessels which is must to keep blood flowing through your body. If we do not  have blood pressure, gravity would simply pull all of our blood to our legs, and  it would stay there only! To overcome this, the heart pumps the blood through your body, up to the brain, and down to the feet. We measure this pressure as the heart pumps the blood out (also known as the “top number” or systolic blood pressure), and the pressure in the arteries as the heart relaxes in between each beat (the “bottom number” or diastolic blood pressure).

You can feel perfectly well and yet force of blood pressing against the walls of your arteries can be high enough to cause damage  to your life or to other organs .There are some known key factors which are contributors to  increase risk of hypertension :

1.     Age

In the majority of cases the most significant contributor to high blood pressure is age. As with the growing age arteries stiffen. That means same volume of blood is pushed into smaller area ( with comparison to earlier time when you were young and there was no stiffening of arteries) therefore blood pressure may rise. Sixty per cent of people aged 60 or older have high blood pressure. But age is not the factor.

2.     Family history

You are at higher risk if your family have history of this specially in the blood relations, but genetics is only responsible for about 30-40 % of the cases of high blood pressure. In some families the effect is strong, while in others even both parents have high blood pressure but the offspring have no effect. Here what is worth noting, that families don't just share genes but also  shared lifestyle habits and those may be the major contributor to high blood pressure.

3.     Smoking

The smoking  adds to the risk of developing high blood pressure specially in the older people as they are  more vulnerable. Smoking have shown marked  increases the risk of heart disease or stroke for a given level of high blood pressure compared to a non-smoker.

4.     Drinking alcohol

Alcohol  intake has direct relation with high blood pressure. It has worst effects on people  who drink and smoke .Regular heavy drinking can also cause substantial rises in blood pressure, which can lead to a stroke.

5.     Being overweight or obese

Obesity is one of the major cause for many sickness so in the case of  high blood pressure this single factor can increase your blood pressure up to  6 per cent. Extra body fat on your tummy and buttocks carries the greatest risk.

6.     Low physical activity

Reduced physical activity and more table work can increase your blood pressure 3-4 mmHg with comparison to the more  Physically active people.

7.     Kidney disease

Inflammation and infection (among other things) can cause kidney disease, and infected kidney’s major cause of high blood pressure. At the same time high blood pressure can cause kidney problems too

8.     Diabetes

High blood pressure is much more common in people with diabetes (60 per cent of people with type 2 diabetes and 40 per cent of people with type 1 have high blood pressure).

9.     Too much salt in your diet

Sodium chloride (ordinary salt) is the main source of blood pressure, when sodium in blood increases, blood vessels retain more water to balance the sodium concentration and his extra water in vessels causes high blood pressure.The recommended maximum salt intake is less than 6 grams a day, but most of us eat more then 6 grams .

By now, you know the major causes , so can work out a plan  to avoid blood pressure or to manage it to a level , where you can live a healthy life .