High Blood Pressure Treatment and Monitors

Did you know that almost one out of every three people in America suffers from high blood pressure? What’s scary about these statistics is that one out of three of these people don’t even realize that they have high blood pressure! How can this be? High blood pressure is truly a “silent” disease. In the early stages of the disease, most people have no symptoms, nor any indication that they have something this serious wrong with them.  This can be very dangerous.

As time goes on, people with undiagnosed high blood pressure can develop a few telltale symptoms, which moss people tend to ignore as not being important enough to worry about. These symptoms are –

• Headaches
• Dizzy spells
• Nosebleeds

All of these can indicate that high blood pressure is present.

Several scenarios can cause high blood pressure. Usually, it is not just one, but several of these factors.

• Being overweight means that your artery walls have more work to do in order to send the extra blood your larger body requires throughout your circulatory system. This extra activity can cause the blood pressure to rise, and to stay high.

• Lack of exercise can cause your heart rate to be faster. This in turn will cause your heart to have to work harder for you.

• Smoking any sort of tobacco can damage the walls of your arteries, which can be a cause of high blood pressure. There are all sorts of chemicals in tobacco which contribute to the damage.

• Salt intake has long been known to drive up your blood pressure because it causes you to retain fluid. This extra fluid causes stress on your entire body. Too much sodium in your diet over a period of time has been rumored to cause high blood pressure to develop.

• A lack of potassium in the diet can also cause the salt level in the body to stay unnaturally elevated. This is because potassium in the body balances the salt.

• Stress and high blood pressure seem to go hand and hand. If you have one, you usually have the other.

• Drinking alcohol over a period of time is known to drive the blood pressure up and keep it that way.

A normal blood pressure reading is 120/80 or lower. If your blood pressure is 140/90, this is considered high blood pressure.

One of the best ways to know for sure whether or not you have high blood pressure is to invest in a home blood pressure monitor. Taking your blood pressure at home on a daily basis and keeping a detailed notation of the readings is a good way for you to see whether or not your numbers fluctuate. There are several different styles of blood pressure monitors available, but only two main types. They are –

• Aneroid monitors, which are the type with a gauge that you read by looking at a dial. You must inflate this type monitor by hand with a bulb that you squeeze.  It is economical to buy this type of monitor, though harder for the novice to use.

• Digital monitors, which are made with your choice of a manual or an automatic cuff let you see your results on a small screen.  It is the most popular type of blood pressure monitor because it is so easy to use, even for someone who has never used a monitor before.  You should be very still while using this type of monitor for complete accuracy.

Exercising and choosing to eat a low fat, well balanced diet that includes fruit, vegetables, and grains is a good treatment for many people to lower their blood pressure to an acceptable rate.