Alcohol Abuse Advice

Why You have High Blood Pressure?

Gaining control of blood pressure begins with understanding what constitutes normal blood pressure and what is high blood pressure. Armed with this knowledge, you can take appropriate steps to bring your blood pressure back to normal.

High blood pressure is called the silent killer because many people with the problem never know they have it. Of the fifty million Americans with high blood pressure, only about thirty million have been diagnosed. The rest may never know until they go to a doctor for another reason—a physical for insurance purposes, a stroke, heart attack, kidney failure, or some other problem either caused by or having nothing to do with high blood pressure—and have their blood pressure taken in a workup.

If your diastolic blood pressure went from 70 one day to 105 the next, you’d immediately get symptoms. But blood pressure usually creeps up slowly, often over many years, and your body adjusts to the gradual change. You feel “normal” until that day your doctor or the nurse says, “Your blood pressure’s too high!” However, you may experience the following symptoms, which can be early warning signs of high blood pressure.

• Headaches, especially in the morning
• Ringing in the ears
• Unexplained dizziness
• Spontaneous nosebleeds
• Depression without apparent cause
• Blurred vision
• Tension when there is no cause
• Flushing of the face

In-deed, most common high blood pressure is the outcome of many factors that have accumulated over the years. Following is a list of common causes.
• Alcohol
• Dietary fat imbalance
• Low dietary K-factor (sodium-potassium balance); excess sodium chloride (salt)
• Excess weight
• Heredity
• Insulin overload
• Poor nutrition
• Poor fitness
• Stress

In short, about 85 percent of all high blood pressure cases can be reversed by deliberate changes in diet and lifestyle. About two-thirds of the remaining 15 percent can significantly bring down their need for medication by the same measures. This means that nearly everyone with high blood pressure can dramatically lower his blood pressure by following appropriate actions.