(This is the third of a three part series on high blood pressure. The first part described the definition of high blood pressure, and the second part discusses signs, symptoms, and complications of high blood pressure.)
Treatment of high blood pressure requires a willingness to change your lifestyle and to take medications regularly if this is necessary.
Lifestyle
Here are the key lifestyle changes that will either prevent high blood pressure in the first place or lower it so that it is not a danger to your health in the second place. If you are willing to maintain these changes, you will not only prevent high blood pressure, but you will have a very high quality life as well.
- Stop smoking or chewing tobacco
- Lose weight
- Limit alcohol intake to 2 drinks or less daily
- Increase physical activity to 45 minutes four or more days a week
- Reduce salt in your diet
- Maintain adequate potassium, calcium and magnesium in your diet
- Reduce saturated fat and cholesterol in your diet
Studies have clearly shown that a diet that emphasizes fruits and vegetables is very helpful in lowering blood pressure. Such a diet is called the DASH diet (diet to stop hypertension) and is described in detail here:
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/hbp/dash/new_dash.pdf
If you combine DASH with reduction in salt intake and reduction in calories, the benefits will be enormous.
Drugs
There are more than 60 different drugs that are available for the treatment of high blood pressure. Surely there are several that would work for you. The drugs are divided into different classes based on their mechanism of action. The classes include:
- Diuretics: drugs that lower blood pressure by forcing the body to rid itself of salt and water through the kidneys
- Beta-adrenergic receptor blockers: reduce the force of contraction of the heart
- Calcium channel blocking agents: reduce blood pressure by relaxing the muscles of the heart and arteries
- Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors: affect the system in the kidney know as the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system that keeps the blood pressure high. By inhibiting angiotensin converting enzyme, the substance that produces aldosterone is blocked and blood pressure is lowered.
- Angiotensin II receptor blockers: lowers blood pressure by not allowing angiotensin II to attach to its receptor where it causes contraction of arteries and release of aldosterone
There is definitely a drug in all these that will work for you, but no drug works if you don’t take it.
(This is the second of a three part series on high blood pressure. The first part discussed the definition of high blood pressure, and the final part will describe the treatment of high blood pressure.)
High blood pressure is usually free of signs or symptoms until it has time to do its damage over 10 or more years. Measurement of your blood pressure at least annually is essential. People believe that headache is a symptom of high blood pressure, but most people with headaches have normal blood pressure and most people with high blood pressure do not have headaches.
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(This is the first of a three part series on high blood pressure. The second part will discuss the signs, symptoms, and complications of high blood pressure, and the final part will describe the treatment of high blood pressure.)
Before you can understand high blood pressure (also referred to as hypertension), you need to know what blood pressure represents. When you have your blood pressure taken, you usually get a result that sounds like 120 over 80 and looks like 120/80 when your doctor writes it down. The 120 is called the systolic blood pressure (SBP). The systolic blood pressure is the amount of pressure in your arteries as the heart pumps blood from its left side to the rest of the body. The 80 is the diastolic blood pressure (DBP). The diastolic blood pressure is the lowest pressure in the arteries just before the heart begins to pump again.
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Prediabetes is defined by your blood glucose (sugar) just like diabetes. Here is a table that shows you normal values, prediabetes values and diabetes values for the blood glucose.
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Diabetes mellitus that develops during a pregnancy is called gestational diabetes. It occurs in about 2 percent of pregnancies. During pregnancy, the growing fetus and the placenta (the tissue between the mother and her baby) create various hormones that help the fetus to grow and develop properly. Some of these hormones have other characteristics, such as anti-insulin properties that decrease your body’s sensitivity to insulin, the hormone that controls the blood glucose, causing glucose to rise. Other actions of the hormones include increasing glucose production, with a further rise in the glucose.
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Diabetes mellitus, or simply, diabetes, is a disease that damages the body when the blood glucose (sugar) is allowed to remain too high for too many years.
Major Types of Diabetes
There are several major types of diabetes:
- Type 1 diabetes is the form that used to be called juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes. It starts most often in childhood. The patient has an absolute need for the hormone insulin, since his pancreas, the organ that makes insulin, can no longer do so. The insulin is usually given by injection and must be balanced by food intake in order to keep the blood glucose as normal as possible.
- Type 2 diabetes is the form that used to be called adult-onset diabetes. It is a lifestyle disease, resulting from excessive weight gain and lack of exercise. The patient does not lack insulin, but has insensitivity to his own body’s insulin. Treatment is started with diet and exercise but may ultimately require pills or insulin.
- Gestational diabetes is the form that occurs in pregnancy when the hormones of pregnancy overwhelm the body’s insulin so that the blood glucose rises. It can cause problems with the growing fetus who tends to grow large and have a difficult delivery. Gestational diabetes can also become type 2 diabetes later in life.
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At last, the Food and Drug Administration has taken action and banned the use of Avandia, a drug that was developed for diabetes, unless a person with diabetes has failed every other drug for diabetes and has been made aware of the substantial risks of Avandia to the heart. In Europe, the drug’s sales will be halted entirely.
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With all this interest in vitamin D, you want to be sure that you have enough in your blood. If not, you want to make sure that you build up your level to the right amount. So what is the right amount? You determine the level of vitamin D by doing a blood test for 25 (OH) vitamin D. That’s 25 hydroxy vitamin D. Most experts agree that a level of 32 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) in the blood is optimal for bone health but no one agrees on what is optimal for immune health, heart health, cancer health and all the other important functions that vitamin D appears to have.
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Lately it seems as though every other article in newspapers and magazines describes a new benefit for vitamin D. Could any substance in your body really be so critical? What is the truth and what is a myth?
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Osteoporosis is the gradual loss of bone that occurs in both women and men as they get older, but accelerates in women once they reach the menopause, the time when periods are lost. That starts around age 45 to 50. Bone loss speeds up in women because women greatly reduce their production of estrogen, the major female hormone, when women no longer have periods. Once enough bone is lost, both women and men may suffer fractures, especially in the hips and spine, that could lead to permanent disability or death. Bone is very important in our bodies. It is not an inactive organ but has major functions. The functions of bone include:
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What’s a Normal Blood Sugar?
I am often asked this question, “What is a normal blood sugar?” It should be relatively easy to answer, but there is a lot of potential confusion that I need to clarify.
What is the difference between sugar and glucose?
Sugar is the name for any one of many edible carbohydrates that taste sweet. The common one that you know is table sugar, which is actually sucrose, the sugar in sugar cane and sugar beets. Then there is the sugar in fruits, called fructose. But the sugar that really affects your life is glucose. This is the sugar that floats around in your blood, providing energy for your muscles, food for your brain cells and power for the millions of chemical reactions that take place in your body. Continue reading →
One of the fears that people who need supplements of vitamin D describe is the danger of a vitamin D overdose. Take it from me. Unless you’re a toddler, this fear is way overblown.
Most of the cases of vitamin D toxicity occur when a big mistake is made in the dosage, particularly in children. For example, children often take vitamin D in liquid form. Some liquid preparations of vitamin D contain 500 international units (IU) in 2 teaspoons. Other liquid preparations contain 400 IU in 2 drops. If you give 2 teaspoons of the preparation that contains 400 IU in 2 drops, you would be giving 48,000 IU. Even then it would require many days of this wrong dose to cause toxicity, even in children. In adults a dose of 10,000 IU daily for up to 5 to 6 weeks has rarely been associated with toxicity. Continue reading →
For decades we have been warned to stay out of the sun at all costs. The sun is accused of causing skin cancer, wrinkles and even malignant melanoma. The sun provides us with vitamin D, essential to our body. There is little or no danger if you expose your skin to the sun for a short amount of time. Cover your face with sun block, but expose your arms and legs for 15 minutes 3 to 4 times a week. That is in the summer between 11 AM and 1 PM. You will get all the vitamin D you need and won’t have to worry about sun damage.
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The question is how much vitamin D do you need? You can easily find out how much vitamin D you have by a simple blood test. Ask your doctor to order a 25 hydroxy vitamin D level. Most experts believe that a level of 30 nanograms per milliliter is enough. But some studies suggest that a level of 40 or even 50 is needed to provide sufficient vitamin D for all its functions.
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