Women And High Blood Pressure - Choose A Healthy Lifestyle

Here's how not to join the Women and High Blood Pressure club. Yes, dear women over 40, you can take action to prevent and control high blood pressure by choosing a healthy lifestyle.

These steps include...

• maintaining a healthy weight
• being physically active
• following a healthy eating plan, that targets fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy foods
• choosing and preparing foods with less salt and...
• if you drink alcoholic beverages, do it in moderation.

Sally is a long-standing member of the Women and High Blood Pressure club. She’s over 40 and was diagnosed while in her 30’s. She has a family history of high blood pressure and heart disease including heart attacks and strokes. Sally was well aware that high blood pressure is a silent killer.

Sally was taking three different blood pressure medications for control. (By the way there is no cure for high blood pressure). She was compliant with taking them every single day, for the rest of her life. She accepted it.

However, as she began to age her blood pressure readings started climbing, gradually. The systolic (top number) should be below 140 and the diastolic(bottom number) should be below 85 per her doctor.

Her readings were fluctuating and unstable, sometimes as high as 185/95. She learned that when it was elevated, she could feel a disturbing pounding in her head. For reasons unknown to her, the pressures would come back down to normal.

One day Sally had a panic attack (she had a history of them -no treatment needed). It caused her blood pressure to skyrocket to 200/110.

She was taken to the emergency room and admitted over night for observation. Well, of course the pressures returned to normal. However, it was determined that it was time to completely change her medications because after 10 years, they no longer controlled her pressures. It happens. Sally had to make some lifestyle changes to prolong her life.

Fatty foods do not directly affect blood pressure. However, saturated fats and cholesterol in foods raise blood cholesterol, which increases the risk for heart disease. High fat foods also are high in calories, which must be lowered if you need to lose weight.

Caffeine in coffee, tea, sodas and chocolate only raises blood pressure momentarily. So you should be able to continue to have drinks that contain caffeine, unless you are sensitive to it or have heart disease and your doctor tells you to avoid it.

Stress can make blood pressure go up for a while, and it has been thought to contribute to high blood pressure. But the long-term effects of stress are not clear at this time.

Smoking tobacco can temporarily raise blood pressure, and it DOES increase the risk of heart and blood vessel diseases.

Tranquilizers and sedatives will not keep your blood pressure down.

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