Controlling High Blood Pressure - How to Keep Hypertension at Bay

Controlling high blood pressure takes a multifaceted attack. Some of the things involved in getting and keeping blood pressure in the healthy zone include keeping your weight down, eating a healthy diet, living a healthy lifestyle and sometimes taking medication.

When talking about controlling weight it is important to understand that there is a correlation between being overweight and suffering from hypertension. However there is no hard, fast rule about how much exactly being overweight means to how much your blood pressure would be. There are people who are overweight who are not having problems. By the same token, there are people who are living at the perfect weight but are suffering from hypertension. Do remember though overweight people are in a higher risk category.

Eating Do's and Don'ts

Eating a healthy diet means avoiding certain types of foods and adding others to your diet. High sodium, high fat foods should be avoided. Fresh fruits and vegetables should be added to the diet. Whole grains and high fiber foods are also very healthy. Simply making these adjustments can go a long way toward getting one's blood pressure under control.

Like with eating a healthy diet, living a healthy lifestyle involves doing some things and not doing some others. For instance, smoking is out of the question! Consuming alcohol should be done in moderation. Having more than a couple of drinks every day in itself could cause hypertension. It is recommended a person consume no more than a few alcoholic beverages each week. If you have hypertension and are unable to adhere to this rule, you may have another problem you must seek help with.

Running a Marathon is not Necessary

Living a healthy lifestyle also involves getting some exercise. This is important! Even if you are unable to walk, deep breathing exercises can do a world of good. For the rest of us a nice 2 mile walk three days a week could change bad health into good health. Simply filling the body with oxygen and absorbing the natural vitamin D sunshine provide us with give us a dynamic one-two punch that help us maintain good health.

Sometimes it doesn't matter what we do. We can be the perfect weight, eat the recommended diet and do our exercises regularly and still we could be diagnosed with hypertension. In such cases, the doctor will prescribe blood pressure lowering medication. These days, this is no great setback. These medications have little side effects and can be taken as prescribed for many years without doing us any harm.

So of course, we all want to do all we can to keep hypertension out of our lives. However, this is a medical issue and whatever we are doing about this medical issue should be done under the supervision of our doctors.