What is Blood Pressure?
Blood pressure is the pressure of the blood circulating in your body against the walls of your blood vessels. It is divided into two numbers. The first number on your reading is called the systolic pressure or the pressure on your artery walls when your heart is contracting. The second number on your reading is called the diastolic pressure or the pressure on your artery walls when your heart is resting between contractions.
What does blood pressure tell us?
Blood pressure gives us an idea of how hard your heart is having to work to pump blood through your body. It is important to check your blood pressure.
What does high blood pressure mean?
High blood pressure, also called hypertension, means your heart is having to work hard to push your blood throughout your body.
What are the symptoms of high blood pressure?
Often there are no symptoms at first but if left untreated, high blood pressure increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, and other serious health problems.
How to treat high blood pressure?
- Always consult your doctor first and follow up frequently
- Weight loss
- reducing your weight by two pounds has been shown to lower your blood pressure by 1 mm Hg (the unit used to measure blood pressure)
- Diet
- Increasing intake of fruit, vegetables, and whole grains and decreasing intake of saturated/trans fat
- Keeping daily sodium intake under 1500 mg
- Increasing daily potassium intake to 3.5-5 g
- Potassium is found in dried fruits (raisins, apricots), beans, lentils, winter squash (acorn, butternut), spinach, broccoli, beet greens, avocado, and bananas
- Decrease alcohol intake to ≤1 standard drink a day
- Head over to our recipe section to get ideas on budget-friendly recipes to make
- Exercise
- aerobic exercise or weight training for 90-150 minutes per week
- Stop smoking
How to treat high blood pressure?
