High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is often thought of as a modern phenomenon, associated with office work, but it is not! Even the ancient Egyptians suffered from high blood pressure!
In fact however, there is archaeological evidence to suggest that high blood pressure was a problem that afflicted even the ancient Egyptians. So this is an ancient and enduring health problem for human beings. What is recent though, is our ability to diagnose high blood pressure, to realize its importance, and to come up with ways for controlling high blood pressure.
So this is not a new condition, but what, then, is the modern medical view on the best methods for controlling high blood pressure? Here we present the three primary ways of doing so:
- Advice 1: A better diet and sufficient exercise.
For newly diagnosed cases of high blood pressure, the first prescription will almost always relate to lifestyle changes. This is firstly because dietary changes and a more active lifestyle have been proven to reduce blood pressure, but it is also because many patients diagnosed with high blood pressure are inactive and have poor diets.
Essentially, the recommendations for treating high blood pressure are regular aerobic exercise and a diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables and minimal salt, sugar and fatty foods. A diet along these lines has been proven to be effective in combating high blood pressure by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Another helpful dietary modification is to increase the intake of calcium. An increase in calcium in the diet also increases dietary potassium, which, at least in theory, can offset the effect that sodium has and work on the kidney to reduce blood pressure. Studies have shown that an increase in calcium in the diet is effective in reducing blood pressure.
- Advice 2: Stop smoking and drinking.
Like so many medical conditions, high blood pressure is negatively affected by smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol. For reasons that are not entirely agreed upon by the medical fraternity, blood pressure almost always increases following the consumption of tobacco and/or alcohol. In addition, smoking cigarettes increases the risk of the patient suffering two of the most deadly outcomes of high blood pressure: strokes and heart attacks.
- Advice 3: Medication.
Drugs are usually only prescribed by medical professionals for high blood pressure when the case is unusually severe, or when lifestyle changes have been tried but were ineffective. There are many different medications for hypertension, all of which act in some way to lower blood pressure. They are known collectively as antihypertensives. Antihypertensives can be highly effective in lowering blood pressure, but unfortunately, all medications for high blood pressure carry side effects, some of them serious.