The pressure that blood exerts on the walls of your arteries is called blood pressure. When your blood pressure is consistently too high, you have high blood pressure. Your blood pressure is made up of measurements of your systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
When your heart beats, the pressure your blood exerts on the walls of your arteries is called your systolic blood pressure, or diastolic blood pressure. The blood pressure when your heart is at rest between beats is measured as your diastolic blood pressure, which is the lowest blood pressure. Blood pressure below 80 and above 120 is considered normal. High blood pressure is common in older people due to hardening and plaque buildup.
The only way to know if you have high blood pressure is to have your blood pressure measured by your doctor during your annual physical, since high blood pressure often has no symptoms.
Although controlling high blood pressure is simple, ignoring it can lead to life-threatening conditions such as stroke, heart attack, and other serious cardiovascular problems.
Causes of High Blood Pressure
- Age: Your risk of high blood pressure increases as you get older. Your arteries naturally stiffen as you age, even if you eat well and live a healthy lifestyle.
- Weight: Being overweight or obese causes many changes in your body. It can disrupt hormones that increase your risk of high blood pressure. It can also cause plaque buildup in your arteries, forcing your heart to work harder.
- Salt: When you eat a lot of sodium (salt), your body retains water to get rid of the sodium. The more water in your body, the more pressure it puts on your heart and blood vessels, leading to higher blood pressure.
- You are black: Black people are more likely to have high blood pressure. They are also more likely to have serious complications from high blood pressure, such as stroke, heart failure, or kidney failure.
- Genetics: Some people have a genetic predisposition to high blood pressure. Doctors don’t know exactly how genetics affect blood pressure, but they do know that it often runs in families.
- Being sedentary: Exercise strengthens your heart, making it easier for it to pump blood. When a healthy heart pumps blood efficiently, it puts less pressure on your blood vessels.
- Smoking: The nicotine in cigarettes and chewing tobacco narrows your blood vessels, making your heart work harder to pump blood.
- Drinking too much alcohol: Drinking more than one alcoholic drink a day (for women) or two a day (for men) increases levels of hormones that signal your blood vessels to constrict. It also reduces the amount of fluid in your body, causing you to retain water and putting pressure on your heart and blood vessels.
What strategies work to reduce high blood pressure?
Here are three simple and easy-to-implement strategies that can help:
1. Cut back on salt
At every meal, salt is often hidden “invisibly” in processed foods, fast foods, and even dipping sauces. However, consuming too much sodium each day will cause the body to retain water, increasing blood volume and putting great pressure on the walls of blood vessels. That is why reducing salt intake is considered a first and extremely important step.
To make this easier, replace salt with natural spices such as lemon, garlic, pepper, turmeric, or herbs. Start reading food labels carefully and prioritize products labeled “low sodium” to protect your blood vessel health.
2. Control your weight
When your body weight exceeds a reasonable level, your heart has to work harder to pump blood throughout the body. This increases the pressure on the circulatory system, and blood pressure also climbs accordingly. On the contrary, just losing 5–10% of your body weight can help you see a significant improvement in your blood pressure index.
The solution here is not a strict diet but a balanced diet: lots of green vegetables, fresh fruits, whole grains and healthy fats from fish, nuts, avocados. Cut down on sweets, carbonated drinks, fried foods – your body will be lighter, and your heart will also “breathe a sigh of relief”.
3. Stay active
Regular exercise is one of the most effective ways to control blood pressure without medication. Exercise strengthens the heart, makes blood vessels more flexible, lowers cholesterol levels and naturally balances blood pressure. You don’t have to go to the gym, just walk briskly for 30 minutes a day, cycle, do yoga or dance, or any activity that gets your body moving and sweating will help. The most important thing is to create a regular, uninterrupted habit.
