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Hypertension or high blood pressure can be prevented easily if you follow very simple steps. A person is said to be suffering with high blood pressure when his or her systolic pressure is above 140 and the diastolic pressure is 90 or above. There can be many causes of High blood pressure such as old age, diseases or consuming alcohol, smoking, lack of exercise etc. One can control the blood pressure by taking medication depending upon doctor’s recommendations.
However, to maintain the blood pressure one can follow these simple lifestyle strategies and can save oneself from any major complications.
- Meditation: Taking medication for longer, leaves behind a lot of negative side effects. But the side effects of meditation are all positive. Try to do meditation at least for half an hour daily, it will calm your body and mind and thus relaxing each and every muscle of the body, and heart need not pump blood at an accelerated rate, thus helping in lowering your blood pressure.
- Exercise/Walk: Physical activity plays important role in life. A 30 to 60 minutes of walk or exercise can help you to maintain your health and at the same time can lower blood pressure at least 4 to 9 (mmhg). Ask your doctor before doing anything. If there are no restrictions, then the doctor can plan a proper exercise plan for you.
- Lose weight: Blood pressure is proportional to the body weight. The more body weight, greater chance of having high blood pressure. If you are on the higher side of the scale, then try shedding some pounds, even the medication works better if you are light weight. Also, keep checking on your waistline, carrying too much weight around the waist is not good for blood pressure.
- Healthy diet: Whole grain Food, less fatty food, fruits, vegetables, can lower your blood pressure significantly. Consume food carefully. Food plays a important role in maintaining blood pressure.
- Avoid Overeating: Do avoid binge eating of food, maintain the sheet, where you can log when and what you eat. This helps in monitoring your food habits.
- Lower salt intake/ increase potassium intake: High intake of salt is not good for blood pressure try to control the intake of salt. Increase intake of potassium, it lowers the effects of salt. Fruits, vegetables are good source of it. Ask your doctor to recommend how you can fulfill the requirement of potassium.
- Avoid junk food: When shopping for food, restrict yourself from picking junk food.
- Restrict alcohol drinking: Over doing of anything is bad, but if maintain can do wonders. Same thing applicable to alcohol. Over Drinking is bad for all the organs of the body, however less or moderate or social drinking is permissible. A one drink per day for women and 2 for men is good, it maintain heart health.
- Avoid smoking (passive as well): Nicotine in tobacco can significantly increase your blood pressure. Second hand smoke is bad for the heart, and also tend to increase blood pressure.
- Take Supplements: As per doctor recommendations, you can take some supplement available in the market.
- Beat the stress: Try to control the stress. Some amount of anxiety may shoot blood pressure significantly. Everybody is having problems, but stressing over it, will not get solutions. Think calmly, do meditation. Try to control stress for better health.
- Monitor blood pressure: Regularly check your blood pressure at home and get weekly or monthly checkups at the hospital. Be in touch with your doctor, try to use a good blood pressure monitor to meausre your blood pressure at home.
- Laugh: Handshake with friends and family. Take the support of your family and friends. Laugh with them. Laugh can reduce lots of problems. Take emotional support from them. Explain your condition to them, and ask their help to keep you motivated.
- Eat dark chocolates: If you are a chocolate lover, then it’s a treat, you can relish dark chocolate. Studies shows, flavanols in dark chocolate make arteries elastic, thus helps in reducing high blood pressure.