Posts Tagged ‘blood pressure’

How Does Exercise Help Your Blood Pressure?

If you are concerned about your blood pressure being high, which is also known as hypertension, you are probably asking yourself what you can do about it. Well, no guidance on medical matters could be complete without the get-out phrase of telling you to chat about it with your doctor first, so now that we have got that out of the way, there are a number of things that you can do that your GP will not disagree with.

The first is to lose weight through a prudent diet, if you are overweight. Cut down on salt and eat more fresh fruit and vegetables. The second is to quit smoking, the third is to not imbibe so much alcohol and the fourth, the subject of this piece, is to take more exercise. Exercise will help you reduce weight and it will also reduce your blood pressure.

Blood pressure tends to rise with age and age tends to coincide with a less energetic vocation, as you are promoted into the office and a less dynamic home life as the kids are older and have probably left home. If you let watching TV take over from exercising as your main kind of entertainment, the chances are that you will acquire hypertension.

The fact is, that you ought to be getting more exercise as you get older not less. Exercising will not just reduce your hypertension, but avoiding hypertension will also reduce your chances of having a stroke and getting kidney disease. Exercising is a medium to long term strategy, because the premise of the strategy is to fortify the heart. Exercising will cause your heart to beat faster which will make it more powerful.

A stronger heart will have less trouble pumping your blood around. Exercise can reduce your blood pressure by ten points or ten millilitres. Exercise can not just reduce your hypertension, but it can prevent you from procuring it.

If you have let yourself go, be wary of exercising too strenuously at the beginning. Do not put excessive strain on your heart for the first few of months. What can you do? Well, walking or swimming is a good beginning. Most doctors would agree that hiking only thirty minutes every morning and thirty minutes each evening can make a huge difference to your heart and your blood pressure.

You can walk in the open air or if that is inconvenient, you could get a stepping machine. After a few of months, you will be fit enough to take on more arduous exercises like yoga or going to a gym.

If you are concerned about over doing it, you should join a gym where someone will keep an eye on you or even think up a routine for you. A home blood pressure monitor is a useful device to have. The best type to get is the fully automatic digital monitor with a self-inflating cuff. If you buy one that has a memory, you can easily evaluate your progress at reducing your hypertension.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a number of topics, but is currently involved with work on cause of high blood pressure. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our site at High Blood Pressure Recipes.

Blood Pressure Medication

If you are suffering from high blood pressure, otherwise called hypertension, and you failed to control it by introducing lifestyle alterations, then you will probably be taking blood pressure medication. This medication is vital to hold the ‘Silent Killer’ at bay. Therefore, it is equally vital to take the tablets regularly, because otherwise your blood pressure will begin to rise quite rapidly even within twenty-four hours of missing taking the blood pressure medication.

So, how do you make certain that you bear in mind to take the tablets as prescribed by your physician? It can become a problem for those people who have a bad memory, a busy lifestyle or numerous tablets to take. Some individuals purchase pill boxes with the numbers one to thirty-one on different compartments, so that they can see whether they have missed a day. This is a good concept which works for most individuals.

Others keep their medication on the shelf in the bathroom next to their toothbrush, so that they cannot avoid seeing their blood pressure medication. It is also a good concept to get into the habit of taking your tablets at the same time each day.

However, some tablets should be taken with or right after eating food to reduce the chances of upsetting your stomach. So, if you brush you teeth after breakfast, all well and good. Otherwise, you could leave your pills where you usually eat your breakfast or evening meal, so that you can take them with or after food.

Regularity or routine is the best method of remembering to take your tablets. After even a short time, you will reach for them automatically like Pavlov’s dogs if you take the action that triggers taking the tablets. I work from home and any tablets that I have to take, I keep by my computer so that I take them with coffee as soon as I begin working.

This works if you work from home, yet it is not a good concept to have one set of tablets on the go in your employer’s office and another one at home. You ought to never double up on this type of tablets – it is usually better to miss a day than risk taking them twice if you are definitely not sure. Taking them late however is better than not taking them.

I do not have a pill box, so I simply write the date the pill has to be taken on the back of the foil with a felt tip pen so that I can see easily where I am.

Try to associate taking your tablets with an action or make it a part of another action. For instance, if you maintain a diary, make a point of making a mark each day to indicate that you have taken your tablets and store the tablets by the diary. If the strips of tablets are small, you can keep them with your money – literally in with your money, so that you see them a number of times a day.

If you use a computer every day, you can easily (very easily, honest) set up a daily reminder in Outlook or some other electronic organizer to inform you every day by pop-up to take your blood pressure medication.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a number of topics, but is currently involved with work on foods for high blood pressure. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at High Blood Pressure Recipes.

Does The Atkins Grapefruit Diet Exist?

The Atkins Grapefruit diet is a diet plan, not endorsed by the estate of Dr. Atkins, that plays on the popularity of the grapefruit diet and the Atkins diet name. A closer look into this diet shows that it may not be all it claims to be.

Firstly, it’s pretty difficult to find information on the Atkins grapefruit diet plan. Smart people know that when someone is perpetrating a deception, or a con, they will usually gloss over facts. This is what the Atkins grapefruit diet seems to do in an attempt to persuade people to associate it with two supposedly effective diets.

Is the Atkins Grapefruit Diet part of the Atkins Diet or supported by the firm of the late Dr. Atkins? The answer is no, not only is there no mention of the Atkins Grapefruit Diet on the Atkins web site, but there is no fruit of any kind mentioned in the list of allowed foods in the Atkins diet Induction phase.

The induction phase recommends the following foods:

Fish of all types. All fowl such as turkey and chicken. All shellfish. All meat such as beef or pork. Eggs cooked in all styles, including fried. Cheese. Vegetables. Herbs and Spices. Fats and Oils. Low carbohydrate beverages, including diet soft drinks.

Do you notice something? No fruit is mentioned on that list. Later phases of the Atkins diet do include small amounts of fruits such as cantaloupe, strawberries and even lemon juice, and the pre-maintenance and maintenance phases even specifically allow small amounts of grapefruit. But when compared to the amount of Grapefruit recommended on the Atkins Grapefruit Diet, again there is a discrepancy.

The Atkins Grapefruit Diet recommends a cup of grapefruit juice or a cup of grapefruit sections, with 8 and 18 carbs respectively. Even the most generous stages of the Atkins diet recommends restricting grapefruit intake to less than 8 carbs per day. That’s a direct contradiction of one diet with the other

Most reasonable people would inspect the Atkins website the moment they heard of the Atkins Grapefruit Diet. When they found no mention of that diet on the site, a red light would go off and an alarm bell would sound.

In general, you should remember this: any diet that recommend too heavily on one food, such as grapefruit on a grapefruit diet, is not healthy for all but very short periods. The Atkins Grapefruit Diet is not associated with the Atkins diet, and may interfere with the results of the Atkins diet in its early phases.

Do you want to lose that excess weight real fast? Well, take a free look at The Atkins Diet, by visiting our website called The Atkins Diet Plan

The Carb Count of Dr Atkins’ Diet Plans

Most people on diets count the number of calories that are present in their meal. The low carb diet is very different from these diets because rather than counting calories you have to count your carbohydrate intake. There are now many methods by which you can make a carbohydrate count.

In all of these diets the main thing to remember is that there is a calorific difference between raw and cooked food. With raw foods, you only have to measure the full weight of the food and you can see what the actual carbohydrate count is. However, the cooked version can have various seasoning and other ingredients added, which can change the carbohydrate count of these foods quite dramatically.

In order that you don’t get your foods mixed up you might want to see about obtaining one of those carb counters that are being advertised on the many low carb diet pages on the Internet. Armed with something like this you can very easily look up the carbohydrate count of whatever kinds of food that you like to eat.

There are even carb counters that can discover and calculate the hidden carbs in your favourite foods and whatever the carb content of these foods is, will be displayed. You will then be able to see whether they fit in with the low carb diet you are on. You could also see about obtaining a list of foods where the carbohydrate count for those foods is clearly given.

In this way, when you plan your meals, you will just need to check your list to find out which low carb foods are acceptable. Sometimes, the Internet low carb recipe websites will have the information about the carbohydrate count that is in their recipe’s contents. Of course, if this information is not available you will have to fall back on counting carbohydrates yourself to get this vital information.

You should not worry too much about looking up what the carbohydrate count is of everything in the recipe. Sometimes, you can be a little too dogmatic and end up leaving vital ingredients out of your meals because your carbohydrate count for that meal or the day has been exceeded.

Basically, with a carbohydrate count you can decide whether or not to use certain foods in your meals. However, there is a good side to this carbohydrate counting and there is a negative side. Perhaps the main thing that you need to do is to figure out what foods you consider to be part of a healthy diet and use the carbohydrate count just to find the nutritional value of your meals.

Do you want to lose those excess pounds rapidly? Well, take a free look at Carbohydrate Counters, by visiting our resource called The Atkins Diet Plan

Finding A Good Home Blood Pressure Monitor

If you would like to check your blood pressure at home, you will require a blood pressure monitor. These monitors are not necessarily very expensive and are within the budget of most households. There are in essence two types of home monitor: aneroid and digital.

The aneroid monitor has a dial-type gauge and you read off your blood pressure statistics from that. It also has a cuff, which you wrap about your arm and which you pump up with a rubber bulb. The digital monitors also use a cuff, but it can be manually or automatically blown up. The results are read from a small screen. The choice is yours, but most individuals prefer the automatic digital monitor.

An aneroid home monitor is portable and necessitates neither batteries nor electricity so is somewhat cheaper than the digital version. It also has a stethoscope built into the cuff for easy monitoring. A difficulty could arise in noisy surroundings or if the user is hard of hearing. Someone with arthritic hands or fingers may have problems squeezing the bulb as well.

Digital monitors are more expensive, yet they are more well-liked too despite that, because they can be completely automatic. The screen is also easier to read and some units come with a small printer to create a physical record of your readings. Other digital home monitors have a memory.

The one I use has three memories of thirty spaces each so that you can compare records for a month. Having three memories means that you can monitor and record readings for three separate people or three distinct time slots for one person for the period of a month. If you choose three time slots they could be morning, noon and night, as blood pressures differ during the day.

Whichever type of monitor you decide on, make certain that the cuff is the right size for you. Be especially cautious if you have very substantial or very thin arms. Check the age range for the monitor too. Mine says for use only on people more than 18 years, yet does not say why.

If electricity or batteries is ever likely to become a difficulty, then the automatic digital home monitor may not be for you, although you may be able to rig it up to photovoltaic cells to exploit the sun’s rays.

Neither of these units are difficult to use, if you know how, so be sure that the instruction book does not seem as if it was translated by machine. It is of course vital to know how to take precise readings and how to understand them. In order to check the accuracy of your device it is worth taking it with on your next visit to your GP.

You can compare your readings against those of his sphygmomanometer, which is considered the gold standard of blood monitoring devices. Your doctor will also be able to tell you what your systolic and diastolic pressures should be.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several of topics, but is currently involved with work on high blood pressure charts. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at High Blood Pressure Recipes.

What Is The The Atkins Diet?

The popular name for the ‘Atkins Nutritional Approach’ is the ‘Atkins Diet’, which was the invention of Doctor Robert Atkins. Dr. Atkins had gained a lot of surplus weight while he was studying in medical school and after coming across a new diet in a medical journal, he decided to improve on it and publish it as his own.

Atkins, in his Atkins Diet, stated that he believed that the prevalent theories about weight gain were all wrong. First, he dismissed the idea that saturated fats were bad; instead he said it was it was carbohydrates that led to the weight problems Americans have. Atkins held that our obsession with fat actually worsened the problem. He pointed to all the low-fat foods that were high in carbohydrates, which meant that people on a diet often ate foods that were worse for them than what they normally ate.

The Atkins diet moved the focus. Atkins said that by cutting out carbohydrates, people would burn stored body fats. And if you lose the fat, you lose the weight. He said it was not just a matter of eating less. Dr. Atkins held that your diet could actually help you burn calories. The Atkins diet supposedly burned more calories than were consumed everyday. But the claims were contested.

Dr. Atkins also promulgated the positive influence that his diet should have on people with Type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a disease you usually get early in life, but Type 2 is more often closely associated with diet and excess body weight. Therefore, it should follow that any diet that helps reduce weight, will help people with Type 2 diabetes. The Atkins diet is low in carbohydrates, which must be avoided by those with Type 2 diabetes regardless of the caloric intake, which the Atkins diet does, so Atkins claimed that those who suffer Type 2 diabetes would no longer need medication such as insulin. Doctors do not agree with Atkins on this point, although they do agree, that a lower carbohydrate intake helps control Type 2 diabetes, but there is no proof that carbohydrates cause diabetes.

What are the steps one has to take to follow the Atkins diet? It is followed in four phases – Induction; On-Going Weight loss, Pre-maintenance and Lifetime Maintenance. Here is an overview of the most important phase – The Induction Phase.

The Induction phase is the most difficult phase of the Atkins diet. Atkins is flexible about the time period ” but recommends it lasts for two weeks. During this phase carbohydrates are severely limited ” you can only consume up to 20 grams per day. The goal is to enter a fat burning metabolic phase called ketosis when the body, starved of glucose, will begin converting stored fat into fatty acids needed to power the body. Weight loss during this phase can be extreme ” some Atkins followers reported losses of 5-10 pounds a week or more.

The purposes of the three final phases in the Atkins diet are the learning of the ideal carbohydrate levels for the next two phases: continued weight loss and weight maintenance. Millions of people are still losing the weight they want to on this diet ” but beware the dangers of taking in too much cholesterol.

Do you need to lose that excess weight rapidly? Well, take a free look at The Atkins Diet, by going to our website called The Atkins Diet Plan

How To Understand Your Blood Pressure Figures

If you have reason to become concerned about your blood pressure, you should begin monitoring it yourself at home. High blood pressure or hypertension is known as ‘The Silent Killer’ because you cannot know whether you have it unless you measure it. You cannot guess or just feel it. First of all, you ought to talk to your GP and he will give you some numbers, then you can buy a blood pressure monitor and keep an eye on your situation.

When you are given your blood pressure reading by either your physician or your machine, you will be given two figures, say 120/80.

The first figure is your systolic blood pressure. The systolic pressure is when your heart ‘beats’ or contracts, pumping your blood around you body.

The second number is while your heart expands, sucking blood back into itself. This is the diastolic blood pressure. These readings are of the blood pressure in your arteries.

There are four categories that your blood pressure readings can fall into. The first is normal and it is generally accepted that that means readings below 120/80. These numbers relate to a healthy person and can be achieved by almost anyone by keeping a healthy active lifestyle.

The second stage is known as ‘Prehypertension’ and relates to blood pressures between ‘normal’ and 140/90. This is the warning stage that you ought to be doing something to reduce your blood pressure. This could mean: a modification of diet; drinking less alcohol, tea or coffee; losing weight; taking more exercise; smoking less or giving up smoking altogether.

The third stage is known as ‘Hypertension Stage One’ and is reflected by numbers between prehypertension and 160/100. If you get into this stage then you really have to see your doctor and he will advocate serious changes to your lifestyle along the lines suggested above or / and he will put you on tablets.

The fourth stage is known as ‘Hypertension Stage Two’ and is anything above 160/100. This is quite dangerous and your doctor will want to get you to make radical changes to your lifestyle and / or take tablets which could be for the remainder of your life. If you reach this stage go to your doctor’s as soon as you can.

Whilst you are talking about your blood pressure with your doctor, make certain you tell him about any other medicine you are taking, because some medication will raise blood pressure too. Examples of medication that can raise your blood pressure are: anti-depressants, oral contraceptives and anti-flu or anti-cough treatments.

There are other things that can have an effect on blood pressure as well. lack of sleep is one. Do you have a new-born baby, a sick child, money worries, sleep apnoea or a snoring spouse that prevent you from sleeping properly?

Fear, anger and anxiety are also causes of high blood pressure. So is constipation, drinking too much and smoking. So, before you let your physician prescribe tablets to reduce your blood pressure, be sure he is aware of all your circumstances.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a number of topics, but is currently involved with work on how to read blood pressure. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at High Blood Pressure Recipes.

Preventing High Blood Pressure

If you are concerned about your blood pressure getting too high, you will almost certainly go to your physician to seek advice. Your doctor will invariably want you to make some lifestyle changes or / and take medication if this does not have an effect. Making lifestyle alterations is the first tactic, but it does not always work. It normally does, but just not always.

However, it is vital to try to reduce your blood pressure, also called hypertension, before you go on medication. Lots of individuals are of the opinion that once your body relies on medication to moderate its hypertension, you will never be able to get yourself off the tablets. This is what my GP told me. Therefore, if it goes against your personal beliefs to take tablets, now is the time to do something about it.

The first thing to do is quit smoking and if you regularly drink too much alcohol, to cut back on that too, as both actions will have the effect of raising your blood pressure. Adopting these measures will also have knock-on effects for the remainder of your body. You will be fitter in general by not smoking at all and not drinking very much.

The next thing to do is to raise your level of daily activity. Do you take any exercise at all? If not, you will be surprised at how much two thirty-minute sessions of light exercise will help. Walk for thirty minutes in the morning and evening or replace one walk for thirty minutes gardening or swimming.

Diet is another manner of beating off the hypertension tablets. Salt, or sodium as it is often referred to, is a major cause of hypertension, usually because it encourages water retention. So, cutting back on salt or adopting a sodium depleted diet can have a major effect on your blood pressure.

Try substituting something else for salt: more pepper, a mixture of some other herbs or simply leave it out altogether. After a couple of weeks you will not notice, except that everybody else’s cooking will taste really heavily over-salted! I did this quite successfully.

Add more fresh fruit and vegetables to your diet, because that will also reduce your hypertension. Eating less fat and red meat will also help. Stress is a main factor in hypertension, try to relax a bit more and possibly take up meditation or yoga.

If you are on medication, it is possible that the drugs are raising your blood pressure. If you think that this may be true, take your drugs to the GP and ask his opinion. You may be able to replace some of them. Some of the drugs that can have an adverse impact are: oral contraceptives, steroids, anti-depressants and cold / flu medicines.

You will notice that lots of these techniques for decreasing your (possible) hypertension are interconnected, so if you are an over-weight, inactive smoker who likes a drink, you can do a lot by remedying that and your pressure will fall and you will be healthier in other ways as well.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a number of topics, but is currently involved with work on the cause of high blood pressure. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, just go to our website at High Blood Pressure Recipes.

Controlling High Blood Pressure?

It appears that everybody over the age of around forty is having problems with their blood pressure. There is such a thing as having low blood pressure but the difficulty sweeping Western society for the last twenty-five to thirty years is high blood pressure, which is also called hypertension in medical jargon.

Hypertension is a serious medical condition which can kill if not treated, and it is often an indication of leading a bad lifestyle, so a sufferer can normally avoid hypertension by introducing a couple of lifestyle alterations. The time to implement these changes is as soon as possible, because the changes are sensible ones, however young bodies can take more abuse than older ones, so it is a good idea to keep an eye on your blood pressure from your mid thirties.

Age and ethnicity are factors in hypertension but there is naturally nothing you can do about that, yet the other factors are good for everybody, because they just involve living a healthier lifestyle.

Being plump is a major factor in creating hypertension. The answer is evident – if you are overweight, lose those surplus pounds. Losing only ten pounds can reduce your blood pressure significantly.

Being inactive is another key factor in developing hypertension and is naturally linked with being overweight. Therefore, you can kill two birds with one stone by exercising more in order to lose weight. Eating too much sodium (table salt) is another factor in high blood pressure, so this offers another opportunity to ‘double up’.

While you are attempting to lose weight in order to help reduce your hypertension, incorporate reduced-sodium recipes into your cooking habits. There are lots of low-sodium or low-salt recipes on the Internet and once you have been eating low-sodium for a week or ten days you will wonder why you ever used salt in the first place.

Salt is of course present in some foods more than others, so you will have to have some guidance in the beginning, but merely not adding any salt or sugar to any of your food or drink is a decent start. Eating more fresh fruit and vegetables is another obvious thing to do. Try not to use tinned foods as salt is frequently used to ‘pump up the flavour’ and preserve cheap ingredients in cans.

Smoking is not good for you. We all know that, but it also increases blood pressure and so does drinking too much alcohol on a regular basis. These are difficult lifestyle alterations to master, but you could at least cut down.

Stress, fear, anger, anxiety and sleeplessness are also factors that raise hypertension and it is easy to see that they could all be interrelated. It is often said that exercise reduces stress and so that might now have a triple benefit. If you suffer from stress, meditation or yoga might help you as well.

In short, you can to do something about your hypertension. Some of the alterations are not simple, but merely doing something on all these fronts will have an effect and perhaps keep you off medication for the rest of your life.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several of subjects, but is currently involved with work on foods for high blood pressure. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at High Blood Pressure Recipes.

Expected Levels Of Diastolic And Systolic Blood Pressure

The actual order that the numbers in a blood pressure reading are given is systolic over diastolic. The systolic pressure is higher, because it is the reading taken when the heart actually pumps or beats and the diastolic pressure is lower because it is taken while the heart sucks in a fresh quantity of blood to pump around.

There are rough figures that doctors quote as ’standard’, yet there is no clear, definitive consensus what these numbers are. In the west, most authorities will say that any reading under 120/80 is good. However, there are numerous medical professionals who will say that 140/80 does not require treatment, other than to lose a few pounds, if you are over weight.

This makes it very difficult for the unqualified person to ascertain for him or herself, whether his or her blood pressure is acceptable or not. Blood pressure monitors are very reassuring, very accurate yet not expensive these days, but how can you interpret the data they give you, if not every medical professional has the same opinion?

Perhaps the only way to get the most sense of this data is to go along to your general practitioner with your blood pressure monitor and talk about its findings with your doctor. Your doctor can use his or her sophisticated device and check it with yours then your doctor can give you a few figures that can be expected for someone like you.

I say this because there are several items that can have an effect on blood pressure. In fact, actual blood pressure changes with each beat of the heart, so your blood pressure can be different each time you take it, which is why a BP monitor takes the average (or the maximum) over, say, a two minute period.

Factors that can (and often do) have an effect on blood pressure are:

The ‘White Coat Effect’: some individuals’ BP rises by as much as 25-50 points if they go into a doctor’s surgery. This could be anxiety or it could be fear of doctors, and it is a recognized problem.

Mood: fear, anger, depression and anxiety can upset your blood pressure.

Age: your age has some sway on your BP.

Weather: the temperature and the humidity affects BP

Stress: stress, restlessness, lack of sleep and tiredness can affect the levels of your blood pressure.

Diet: which foods and beverages you have recently consumed have an effect as do whether you are constipated or merely ‘full’.

Smoking: smoking and drinking alcohol have an effect on blood pressure.

Exercise: your physical condition, your metabolism and the amount of exercise you take are also factors.

Time of the Day: for all the above reasons and more, the time of the day that you take the reading has an impact, which is why it is a good thing to have your own blood pressure monitor at home. Then you can measure your BP at definite times of the day and compare the results with the hoped for levels of diastolic and systolic blood pressure given you by your GP.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on several of subjects, but is currently involved with work on high blood pressure charts. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our site at High Blood Pressure Recipes.