Thread: What causes high blood pressure and how can I prevent high blood pressure?

What causes high blood pressure and how can I prevent high blood pressure?

High blood pressure or hypertension can be caused by: Age, a family history in high blood pressure, a high salt diet, lack of exercise, being overweight, smoking, drinking alcohol and stress.
you can prevent it by reducing salt intake, doing regular exercise and by stopping smoking or drinking so much alcohol if you do.

High blood pressure can be caused by a number of different things, but the common contributors of high blood pressure are:
Smoking
Being overweight or obese
Lack of physical activity
Too much salt in the diet
Too much alcohol consumption (more than 1 to 2 drinks per day)
Stress
Family history of high blood pressure
Genetics.
Good blood pressure is 120/90. High blood pressure or hypertension is 140-159/90-99.

High Blood Pressure is greatly influenced by diet and lifestyle. Another reason why it is important to eat healthy and exercise.
High blood pressure is particularly important, because it makes the heart work harder than it should, making the walls of arteries harder over time. Most importantly, chronic high blood pressure, increases one's likelihood of heart disease and stroke.

Many factors can affect blood pressure, including:--
* How much water and salt you have in your body
* The condition of your kidneys, nervous system, or blood vessels
* The levels of different body hormones
Essential hypertension (also called primary hypertension or idiopathic hypertension) is the form of hypertension that by definition, has no identifiable cause. It is the most common type of hypertension, affecting 95% of hypertensive patients, it tends to be familial and is likely to be the consequence of an interaction between environmental and genetic factors. Prevalence of essential hypertension increases with age, and individuals with relatively high blood pressure at younger ages are at increased risk for the subsequent development of hypertension. Hypertension can increase the risk of cerebral, cardiac, and renal events.
Secondary hypertension (or, less commonly, inessential hypertension) is a type of hypertension which by definition is caused by an identifiable underlying secondary cause. It is much less common than the other type, called essential hypertension, affecting only 5% of hypertensive patients. It has many different causes including endocrine diseases, kidney diseases, and tumors. It also can be a side effect of many medications.
Hypertension can be controlled by diet, exercise and medications.
Lifestyle changes can help you control and prevent high blood pressure — even if you're taking blood pressure medication. Here's what you can do:--
* Eat healthy foods.
* Decrease the salt in your diet.
* Maintain a healthy weight.
* Increase physical activity.
* Limit alcohol.
* Don't smoke.
* Manage stress.
* Monitor your blood pressure at home.
* Practice relaxation or slow, deep breathing.
Adopt DASH diet (Mediterranean diet). Eat a low-cholesterol, low-fat diet, which includes cottage cheese, fat-free milk, fish, vegetables, poultry, and egg whites. Use monounsaturated oils such as olive, peanut, and canola oils or polyunsaturated oils such as corn, safflower, soy, sunflower, cottonseed, and soybean oils. Avoid foods with excess fat in them such as meat (especially liver and fatty meat), egg yolks, whole milk, cream, butter, shortening, pastries, cakes, cookies, gravy, peanut butter, chocolate, olives, potato chips, coconut, cheese (other than cottage cheese), coconut oil, palm oil, and fried foods.