If you have high blood pressure, you may wonder if medication is necessary to bring the numbers down. But lifestyle plays a vital role in treating high blood pressure. Controlling blood pressure with a healthy lifestyle might prevent, delay or reduce the need for medication.
There is an average survival rate of only ten months in these cases. There are also increased odds of developing fatal heart disease (such as heart attack or arrhythmias) and kidney diseases if you go untreated for a long time. These can also contribute to an early death.
Steps You Can Take
Eat a healthy diet rich in low-fat dairy, fruits, and vegetables, and low in saturated fat. Limit sodium (salt) intake to no more than 2,300 milligrams a day. Participate in regular aerobic exercise—at least 30 minutes a day, most days of the week.
While there is no cure for high blood pressure, it is important for patients to take steps that matter, such as making effective lifestyle changes and taking BP-lowering medications as prescribed by their physicians.
Uncontrolled high blood pressure can lead to disability, a poor quality of life, or even a deadly heart attack or stroke. Treatment and lifestyle changes can help control high blood pressure to reduce the risk of life-threatening complications.
What causes high blood pressure? High blood pressure usually develops over time. It can happen because of unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as not getting enough regular physical activity. Certain health conditions, such as diabetes and having obesity, can also increase the risk for developing high blood pressure.
When there's no obvious cause, doctors typically treat high blood pressure with medication. But certain risk factors are reversible, like quitting smoking, managing stress, following a healthier diet with less salt, getting regular exercise and losing weight.
Treating out-of-control blood pressure with antihypertensive medication can greatly reduce your risk for heart attack, stroke and heart failure, but the current approach to treatment can't undo all of the previous damage or restore cardiovascular disease risk to ideal levels, a new Northwestern Medicine study suggests.
Blood pressure is mostly a silent disease
Unfortunately, high blood pressure can happen without feeling any abnormal symptoms. Moderate or severe headaches, anxiety, shortness of breath, nosebleeds, palpitations, or feeling of pulsations in the neck are some signs of high blood pressure.
In other words, once blood pressure rises above normal, subtle but harmful brain changes can occur rather quickly—perhaps within a year or two. And those changes may be hard to reverse, even if blood pressure is nudged back into the normal range with treatment.
For most people, the answer is yes. If you have high blood pressure, you should be able to be more active quite safely. But to be on the safe side, it's always a good idea to speak to your doctor or nurse before you start any new physical activity.
Most of the time, blood pressure medicines do not cause side effects. Some people have mild side effects, including dizziness, headaches, swelling in the legs or feet, or stomach problems.
If your blood pressure is equal to or higher than 140/90 mm Hg, you have Stage 2 high blood pressure. Your provider will most likely recommend that you take medicines and recommend lifestyle changes.
Anxiety doesn't cause long-term high blood pressure (hypertension). But episodes of anxiety can cause dramatic, temporary spikes in blood pressure.
High blood pressure causes tiredness as a result of elevated pressure on vital organs such as the brain, heart and kidneys. Often though, medication plays a larger role in contributing to fatigue than the actual condition does. Tiredness is often a common side effect of many medications used to lower blood pressure.
Long-term use of blood pressure medication could be contributing to kidney damage. New kidney research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine is raising concerns that long-term use of drugs commonly prescribed to treat high-blood pressure and heart failure could be contributing to kidney damage.
Blood pressure has a daily pattern. Usually, blood pressure starts to rise a few hours before a person wakes up. It continues to rise during the day, peaking in midday. Blood pressure typically drops in the late afternoon and evening.
Call 911 or emergency medical services if your blood pressure is 180/120 mm Hg or greater and you have chest pain, shortness of breath, or symptoms of stroke. Stroke symptoms include numbness or tingling, trouble speaking, or changes in vision.
Take it first in the morning before eating or taking any medications. Take it again in the evening. Each time you measure, take two or three readings to make sure your results are the same. Your health care provider might recommend taking your blood pressure at the same times each day.
Reactions to stress can affect blood pressure
The body releases a surge of hormones when under stress. These hormones cause the heart to beat faster and the blood vessels to narrow. These actions increase blood pressure for a time. There's no proof that stress by itself causes long-term high blood pressure.
ACE inhibitors
They are a first choice for some younger adults because they are inexpensive and well-tolerated. A simple way to distinguish ACE inhibitors from other blood pressure medications is to look for names that end in “il.”