Well, high blood pressure, also known as “hypertension”, the “silent disease” or the “silent killer” is the measure of pressure that the blood exerts against the wall of your arteries as your heart pumps.

Many people with dangerously high blood pressure are walking around without even knowing that they have the disease because there are no symptoms for weeks, months, or even years.

But high blood pressure is a dangerous condition and complications can be very serious. You see, as the heart pumps the blood through the walls of arteries that have lost their elasticity, the heart has to work much harder to push the blood through them.

Because the blood has to work its way through every organ in the body as well, the pressure affects not only the arteries, but the heart, the liver, the lungs? every vital organ that you have.

Since the arteries need a higher pressure to maintain the flow of blood, all the other organs suffer from the extra surge of blood needed to maintain those weakened arteries.

Complications experienced from high blood pressure can be life threatening.

You may feel healthy even though your body is already on the brink of a stroke, heart attack, dissection of the aorta, kidney failure, or irreversible heart damage.

Medication can help manage high blood pressure. But aside from that, a healthy lifestyle and preventive measures are also needed to fight the disease.

The are a number of ways to manage and lower blood pressure. Number one is to avoid too much salt. Diets low in salt have proven to be helpful to many people, but especially to those suffering from high blood pressure.

Number two is to exercise regularly. This will help the body in so many ways, one of which is to lower blood pressure. For those who are obese, losing a few pounds can have a very positive effect in lowering blood pressure.

Many people have explored alternative measures and there are reports that some of these alternatives produce a wide range of results. It has been suggested that possible relief of hypertension can be found in a variety of practices including acupuncture, aromatherapy, massage therapy, qigong, yoga, and shiatsu.

One area of relief I’m sure most of the medical community can agree on is simple relaxation. It has been known that stress can affect one’s blood pressure so it is advisable to evaluate the things that may be causing stress in your life and finding other ways to handle those issues.

Regardless of the solutions you choose or the available alternatives you explore, one thing is certain, controlled blood pressure is vital in maintaining a healthy body that will see you well into your senior years.

The sooner you become conscious of your blood pressure levels and start practicing a lifestyle that will keep them lowered, the sooner you will start enjoying health benefits that will last a lifetime!

My high blood pressure program can help even if your blood pressure already exceeds normal limits. Following a few simple exercises will bring your numbers down easily in a completely natural way and often within a week…

We tend to think of men as the ones who commonly have heart diseases but heart diseases is the leading killer of both men and women in the United States. Scientists who are studying the cause of the rise in cardiac problems in woman have identified two factors that appear to be the leading cause of hard disease in woman.

The Change of Life.

After menopause, a woman’s body experiences reduced estrogen production, changes in cholesterol levels, changes in the structure of blood vessels, and increased production of the clotting agent fibrinogen. Women who have gone through menopause are two to three times more likely to suffer heart disease than a pre-menopausal woman of the same age. Women that have had a hysterectomy also experience these same raised risk factors. No one yet knows exactly how much a woman’s risk is affected by each of these changes, but they are definitely associated with greater heart disease risk.

Scientists studying women and heart disease hypothesized that hormone replacement therapy could help post-menopausal women fight heart disease; however, long-term studies do not confirm that preliminary idea and doctors no longer recommend hormone replacement therapy to battle heart disease.

When talking about your heart disease risk factors with your doctor, get his or her opinion on using hormonal birth control (the pill or the patch). Most doctors believe that using birth control is reasonable safe for women under thirty-five if no other risk factors are involved such as smoking or being overweight. For women over the age of thirty-file there is not enough evidence that birth control hormones can increase or decrease heart disease in women and more studies are being conducted.

A Change of Lifestyle.

Scientists studying women and heart disease find that women are knowledgeable about what lifestyles are associated with heart disease, and yet they are still prone to maintain those unhealthy lifestyles. For example, according to the National Institutes of Health, fifty-six million American women have high cholesterol, 33% of women have high blood pressure, and 62% of women are overweight. Despite these risks, women are less physically active than men, on average.

The best course of action to take is to reduce your risk of developing congestive heart disease and improve the quality of life. Habits such as not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight by regular activity or exercise, cutting down on the fatty foods, and getting your cholesterol tested can dramatically help prevent heart disease. Don’t become another statistic about women and heart disease.

Common Vitamins and over the counter products can help with Heart Disease such as Sytrinol, Policosanol, Potassium, Pectin, and Niacin.

Sytrinol are known to be useful in helping maintain a healthy cholesterol level in the body by reducing triglycerides and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels.

Policosanol is a natural supplement derived from sugar cane. Policosanol promotes healthy platelet function and helps to maintain normal cholesterol levels in the human body.

Potassium may help prevent high blood pressure and protect against atherosclerosis and reduce the risk of stroke.

Pectin limits the amount of cholesterol the body can absorb. High pectin count in apples may be why “One a day keeps the doctor away”.

If you are at risk from Heart Disease then find a good health care professional prior to starting any type of home treatment.

Niacin is the closest thing available to a perfect treatment that corrects most causes of coronary heart disease. Niacin blocks the release of fatty acids from fat cells. Niacin plays a critical role in energy production, gene expression, and hormone synthesis. You cannot live without it. Niacin also tends to shift LDL particle distribution to larger particle size and improve HDL functioning. The intake of 3 grams Niacin for as little as two weeks can reduce serum cholesterol by 26 percent.

Always consult your doctor before using this information.

This Article is nutritional in nature and is not to be construed as medical advice.

Hypertension does not in itself give dramatic symptoms, but it is dangerous because it causes a highly increased risk for heart infarction, stroke and renal failure.

THE PREVALENCE OF HYPERTENSION

One out of six persons is hypertensive. Most persons suffering from hypertension is over the age of 35. Still 6% of teenagers are hypertensive and also 1% of every child.

THE SYMPTOMS AND CONSEQUENCES OF HYPERTENSION

Hypertension is often without symptoms. By mild hypertension, flushing and headache can occur.

More serious hypertension gives symptoms like: Fatigue, dizziness, palpitations, tachycardia (rapid heart rate) and nosebleeds.

Extreme hypertension gives morning headache, blurred vision, dyspnoea (breathing difficulties) and elevated values of certain components in the blood, like urea and serum creatinine.

Hypertension will in the long run hurt the blood vessels, and serious hypertension can do extensive damage to the blood vessels in a few months or years.

The damaged blood vessels will impair the blood flow. They can also rupture causing a bleeding or be clogged by a blood clot that shuts out the blood flow and causes tissue damage. These things can occur in the brain, causing a stroke, in the heart causing heart infarction or in the kidneys with renal failure as a consequence.

A renal failure will in the next turn cause the hypertension to aggravate, partly because a damaged kidney will not manage to secrete water and salt well enough, and partly because a kidney that do not get enough blood will start a hormonal mechanism that induces the kidney to actively hold back salt and water.

THE MECHANISMS AND CAUSES OF HYPERTENSION

The direct mechanisms causing hypertension is one or more of these factors:

- An increased tension in the blood vessel walls.

- An increased blood volume caused by elevated levels of salt and lipids in the blood holding back water.

- Hardened and inelastic blood vessels caused by arteriosclerosis.

The primary causes behind these mechanisms are not fully understood, but these factors contribute to causing hypertension:

- A high consume of salt

- A high fat consume.

- Stress at work and in the daily life.

- Smoking.

- Over-weight

- Lack of exercise.

- Kidney failure.

LIFESTYLE MEASURES TO PREVENT AND TREAT HYPERTENSION

Lifestyle measures shall always be a component of the hypertension treatment. Sometimes such measures are enough to cure the condition. Those measures are:

- Reducing salt consume.

- Reduction of fat consume, and especially of saturated fat consume.

- Weight reduction.

- Relaxing and stress reduction techniques, for example meditation and autogenic training.

- Regular exercise.

SPECIAL FOOD TYPES THAT REDUCE THE BLOOD PRESSURE

Research projects suggest that the following food types reduce blood pressure.

- Fish oil and fat fish. The working substances seem to be the omega-3 unsaturated fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). The effect from fish oil seems to cease when the fish oil supplements are stopped.

-Olive oil, especially olive oil of the quality extra virgin.

NATURAL SUPPLEMENTS TO HELP AGAINST HYPERTENSION

Natural supplements to treat hypertension exist. These supplements reduce blood pressure by lowering the cholesterol and lipid content in the blood, by preventing oxidation of tissue components by free radicals, and by helping damaged blood vessels to heal. Examples of ingredients having these effects are vitamin B3, inositol, turmenic extract and gum guggul extract.

They may also contain Ingredients giving a direct anti-hypertensive effect, like potassium, magnesium, calcium, vitamin C and fatty acids from marine sources.

MEDICAL TREATMENT OF HYPERTENSION

When lifestyle measures and supplements are not enough to cure the condition, medical treatment must be applied.

Diuretics, or medicines to increase the urine production, are used to decrease the water content in the blood vessels, and thereby reduce the pressure in the vessels. When the water content is lowered, the heart does not need to pump so hard any more, and this will also reduce the pressure.

Beta-adrenergic blockers are another group of medicines to treat hypertension. This group of medicines block the signals that hormones and neurotransmitters give to the vessel walls, and the vessel walls then relax. They also slow down the heart rate to give a lower pressure exerted by the heart upon the blood.