Knowing Your Antihypertensive Drugs

Recently, the occurrence of hypertension, even at a very young age, has given way to the formation of different health societies focusing on hypertension management. Antihypertensive drugs are therapeutically used in lowering blood pressure and are part of a hypertension treatment regimen. Lifestyle changes, coupled with the right kind of diet, are also of great help in hypertension management.

Antihypertensive drugs are prescription medications, and self-medication is highly discouraged. The cause of hypertension may not simply be because of high levels of cholesterol; it may be due to other factors such as too much sodium in the blood, constriction of blood vessels due to fat deposits, a side effect caused by some medications, or a complication brought about by other diseases such as diabetes.

Theantihypertensive drug consists of different classifications based on their mechanism of action. Since hypertension may occur due to different reasons and factors, it will be of great importance to know what factors are involved in its development. For example, diuretics help the body in decreasing too much sodium ions that cause the blood pressure to rise. Beta-blockers, which include atenolol, propranolol and metoprolol, aim to lower blood pressure by antagonizing the effect of beta-receptors that cause vasoconstriction. The beta-blockers lower blood pressure by causing vasodilatation.

The angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or ACE inhibitors that include captopril and enalapril are important in hypertension management. This class of drugs acts by blocking the effect of angiotensin II that causes hypertension and thus, achieving a decrease in blood pressure.

Another very common class of antihypertensive drugs is the calcium channel blockers. Drugs of this class include nifedipine. The vasodilators, on the other hand, are a class of antihypertensive drugs that directly dilate blood vessels to increase peripheral blood flow. This effect is important in lowering high blood pressure.

As with all other drugs, side effects and adverse drug reactions may also occur while on antihypertensive drugs maintenance, so practice caution and awareness for any occurrence of unwanted side effects.

View the original article here

Preventing High Blood Pressure

If you are concerned about your blood pressure getting overly high, you will probably go to your GP to seek advice. Your GP will invariably like you to attempt some lifestyle changes or / and take medication if this does not have an effect. Making lifestyle changes is the first strategy, but it does not always do the trick. It usually does, but just not always.

However, it is vital to strive to reduce your blood pressure, also called hypertension, before you go on medication. Lots of people are of the opinion that once your body relies on medication to reduce its hypertension, you will never be able to get yourself off the tablets. This is what my GP told me. Therefore, if it goes against your personal beliefs to take tablets, now is the time to do something about it.

The first thing to do is stop smoking and if you frequently drink too much alcohol, to cut back on that too, as both actions will have the impact of elevating your blood pressure. Adopting these measures will also have knock-on effects for the rest of your body. You will become fitter in general by not smoking at all and not drinking too much.

The next thing to do is to increase your level of daily activity. Do you take any exercise at all? If not, you will be surprised at how much two thirty-minute sessions of light exercise will help. Walk for thirty minutes in the morning and evening or substitute one walk for thirty minutes gardening or swimming.

Diet is another manner of beating off the hypertension tablets. Salt, or sodium as it is often referred to, is a major cause of hypertension, usually because it encourages water retention. So, cutting back on salt or following a sodium depleted diet can have a major impact on your blood pressure.

Try substituting something else for salt: more pepper, a mixture of some other herbs or simply leave it out altogether. After a few weeks you will not notice, except that everyone else's cooking will taste very heavily over-salted! I did this fairly successfully.

Add more fresh fruit and vegetables to your diet, because that will also reduce your hypertension. Eating less fat and red meat will also help. Stress is a major factor in hypertension, strive to relax a bit more and possibly take up meditation or yoga.

If you are on medication, it is possible that the drugs are increasing your blood pressure. If you think that this might be the case, take your drugs to the physician and ask his opinion. You may be able to substitute some of them. Some of the drugs that can have an undesirable effect are: oral contraceptives, steroids, anti-depressants and cold / flu medicines.

You will notice that lots of these techniques for decreasing your (possible) hypertension are related, so if you are an over-weight, inactive smoker who likes a drink, you can do a lot by remedying that and your pressure will fall and you will be healthier in other ways as well.

View the original article here

Can Chocolate Binges Help Reduce Your Blood Pressure?

High blood pressure or hypertension is a serious disease in the U.S. and in the world. It is so serious that every day millions of people take prescribed medications in an effort to lower their blood pressure to normal range. But what if the simplest of all medicines was dark chocolate? Can dark chocolate really reduce blood pressure?

According to a recently completed German study, the answer is yes. Dr Dirk Taubert, a researcher at the University Hospital of Cologne divided 44 adult men and women with stage 1 hypertension and ranging in age from 56 to 73 years into two groups. One group was given just over 6 grams of dark chocolate a day, each containing 30 mg of polyphenols. Each day the second group received an equal amount of white chocolate, without polyphenols. The study lasted 18 weeks.

At the study's end, it was found that the systolic blood pressure of those participants who ate the dark had dropped an average of three points. Diastolic pressure was reduced by 2 points. In addition, those who ate the dark experience no weight gain. According to Dr. Taubert, the study showed that "Regular intake of small amounts of the dark can help to lower pressure."

Although prior studies have linked foods that are rich in cocoa to lower incidences of heart disease and heart attacks, this study specifically focused on the effects of cocoa on blood pressure. It would appear the the magic ingredient in the chocolate is polyphenols. The higher the percentage of polyphenols in the dark chocolate, the more the LDL (i.e., "bad cholesterol") in the bloodstream was reduced. At the same time the amount of HDL (i.e., "good cholesterol") in the bloodstream increased.

As the news of this study gravitates to the general public, there are bound to be a number of important questions and concerns regarding the intake of dark chocolate. Here are answers to a few:

What is a polyphenol? Polyphenols are a group of chemical substances found in plants. Polyphenols are loaded with antioxidants and flavonoids which have been shown to be very helpful in enhancing the immune system.

Will dark chocolate be covered by insurance? At the present time, no. However, if universal health care passes, there is a possibility that it could be covered. Write your congressman or woman.

Will I require a prescription to buy dark chocolate? Initially no. But as the major drug companies invade the chocolate industry there are sure to be patented chocolate medicines that will require a prescription. Talk to your doctor for the latest info.

Can I overdose on dark chocolate? Yes you can, if you consume a great deal of chocolate in a short amount of time. To best protect yourself, try to only eat dark chocolate that has no alcohol and no sugar.

The important thing is not to go overboard on chocolate binges. If you have elevated blood pressure and decide to add dark chocolate to your diet, talk to your doctor and inform him of your decision so he can help you to make the right dietary decision.

View the original article here

Facts and Myths of High Salt And High Sodium Foods

If you been in a grocery store lately you've probably noticed more and more low sodium foods on shelves from cheese to crackers. Consuming salty foods can increase your risk for serious health conditions like high blood pressure heart diseases and stroke. The obvious fix is to cut some of the salt from your diet but sodium is sneaky it can lurk in many seemingly healthy foods here are some of the worst offenders.

1 Beware of certain breads you probably don't think of breads as salty foods but some types can contains fairly high amounts of sodium. A six and a half inch pita for example contains more than 300 milligrams of salt. Another good choice is whole grain bread which has about 127 ml per slice.

2 Frozen meals packed low calorie frozen meals may seem like the easy way to control portions and watch your weight but most of them contains way too much salt.

3 Salad dressings;you may feels virtues opting for a salads over a hamburger but pay attention to the condiments that you add to your greens. One table spoon of commercially prepared french dressing for example has 214 mg of sodium. Its too much high. The next time you reach for a salad try using oil and vinegar which wont add to your salt intake.

4 Cereals '' you probably don't think of breakfast cereal as a salty food but many of the healthy cereals on the market like corn flakes and toasted oats cereals have almost 300 mg of sodium per cup. Watch your portion size of a cup a one cup serving of frosted miniature wheat cereal for example has only 3mg of salt.

5 A canned beans''some peoples wants to take proteins from beans but canned have too much sodium and salty. If you are vegetarians try to cooking dried beans one cup of boiled beans has only 2mg of sodium.

6 Spaghetti sauce' one cup of spaghetti sauce has 1000 mg sodium. Better you can make your own sauce at home with fresh tomatoes onions bell peppers cut and boil these vegetables has very low amounts of sodium and good sauce.

7 Diet colas while diet colas don't have the sugar and calories of regular colas they actually have more sodium 28 mg for 12 ounces can compared regular has 15 mg. The next time you feels thirsty skip soda in favor of decaf herbal tea or fruits juices both of which are very low in sodium. The average cup of tab water comes in at least 5 mg of sodium.

View the original article here

How Does Exercise Help Your Blood Pressure?

If you are concerned about your blood pressure being high, which is also known as hypertension, you are almost certainly wondering what you can do about it. Well, no guidance on medical matters could be complete without the get-out phrase of telling you to chat about it with your doctor first, so now that we have got that out of the way, there are a number of things that you can do that your physician will not argue with.

The first is to lose weight through a sensible diet, if you are overweight. Cut down on salt and eat more fresh fruit and vegetables. The second is to give up smoking, the third is to not imbibe so much alcohol and the fourth, the subject of this article, is to take more exercise. Exercise will help you reduce weight and it will also moderate your blood pressure.

Blood pressure tends to increase with age and age has a tendency to coincide with a less energetic job, as you are promoted into the office and a less active home life as the kids are older and have almost certainly left home. If you let watching TV take over from walking as your foremost form of entertainment, the chances are that you will acquire hypertension.

The fact is, that you ought to be taking more exercise as you get older not less. Exercising will not merely reduce your hypertension, but avoiding hypertension will also reduce your likelihood of having a stroke and having kidney disease. Exercising is a medium to long term strategy, because the premise of the tactic is to fortify the heart. Exercising will cause your heart to beat faster which will make it stronger.

A more powerful heart will have less trouble pumping your blood around. Exercise can moderate your blood pressure by ten points or ten millilitres. Exercise can not just reduce your hypertension, but it can stop you from procuring it.

If you have let yourself go, be wary of exercising very strenuously at the start. Do not put excessive strain on your heart for the first couple of months. What can you do? Well, walking or swimming is a decent start. Most doctors would agree that walking merely thirty minutes every morning and thirty minutes every evening can make a huge difference to your heart and your blood pressure.

You can walk in the open air or if that is not convenient, you could get a stepping machine. After a few of months, you will be fit enough to take on more arduous exercises like yoga or going to a gym.

If you are worried about over doing it, you should join a gym where someone will keep an eye on you or even think up a routine for you. A home blood pressure monitor is a useful device to have. The best type to get is the fully automatic digital monitor with a self-inflating cuff. If you buy one that has a memory, you can easily evaluate your progress at decreasing your hypertension.

View the original article here

Blood Pressure Medication

If you are suffering from high blood pressure, otherwise called hypertension, and you failed to control it by making lifestyle changes, then you will probably be taking blood pressure medication. This medication is important to hold the 'Silent Killer' at bay. Therefore, it is equally vital to take the tablets regularly, because otherwise the blood pressure will begin to rise quite rapidly even within twenty-four hours of missing taking the blood pressure medication.

So, how do you make sure that you bear in mind to take the tablets as prescribed by your doctor? It can be a problem for those individuals who have a bad memory, a busy lifestyle or many tablets to take. Some people purchase pill boxes with the numbers one to thirty-one on different compartments, so that they can see whether they have missed a day. This is a good concept which works for most individuals.

Others store their medication on the rack in the bathroom next to their toothbrush, so that they cannot help seeing their blood pressure medication. It is also a good concept to get into the habit of taking your tablets at the same time each day.

However, some tablets should be taken with or just after eating food to reduce the likelihood of upsetting your stomach. So, if you brush you teeth after breakfast, all well and good. Otherwise, you could leave your pills where you usually eat your breakfast or evening meal, so that you can take them with or after eating.

Regularity or routine is the best way of remembering to take your tablets. After even a short time, you will reach for them automatically like Pavlov's dogs if you take the action that triggers taking the tablets. I work from home and any tablets that I have to take, I leave by my computer so that I take them with coffee as soon as I start work.

This works if you work from home, but it is not a useful idea to have one set of tablets on the go in your employer's office and another one at home. You should never double up on this sort of tablets - it is normally better to miss a day than risk taking them twice if you are really not certain. Taking them late however is better than not taking them.

I do not have a pill box, so I just write the date the pill has to be taken on the back of the foil with a felt tip pen so that I can see effortlessly where I am.

Strive to associate taking your tablets with an action or make it a part of another action. For example, if you maintain a diary, make a point of putting a mark each day to indicate that you have taken your tablets and keep the tablets by the diary. If the strips of tablets are small, you can keep them with your money - literally in with your money, so that you see them a number of times a day.

If you use a computer every day, you can easily (very easily, honest) set up a daily reminder in Outlook or some other electronic organizer to tell you each day by pop-up to take your blood pressure medication.

View the original article here

A Health Wake-Up Call

Joining a gym is more than just a lifestyle choice: it could be the health wake-up call you need.

When I joined the gym my aim was to build up my stamina, lose some weight and give some sort of routine to my days. I work from home on a freelance basis, so it's very easy to lose track of time. It turned out joining the gym was a wake-up call for me, health-wise.

While I was signing up as a member, my blood pressure was taken a few times and I was told that perhaps I should go to see a doctor - the reading was rather high. My blood pressure readings have usually been low for the past 15 years at least, so this was a shock to me. I had only moved to Melbourne the year before and had not had a reason to see a doctor so, as a result, hadn't checked my BP for over a year.

Soon after, I found a doctor who monitored my blood pressure for a few days before deciding to put me on medication. She couldn't find any obvious reason for it being high, having done the essential blood tests. When I told her that I had just joined a gym, she encouraged me to use it as often as possible and to get fitter and healthier, but not to overdo it, because of my high blood pressure.

As a result I've made some changes to my diet and eat a lot more healthily, paying attention to my salt intake especially. If I can't make it to the gym, I try to squeeze in some other form of exercise, such as yoga or a walk along the beach. The fact that I hadn't displayed any symptoms of having high blood pressure scared me a little and I try not to think of what would have happened if I hadn't joined the gym and got a diagnosis.

I have to admit that I don't go to the gym as often as I should, as I do travel quite frequently and sometimes get too bogged down with work, but I'm glad I took that first step towards a healthier lifestyle.

The exercise that I enjoy the most is the stationery bicycle. I always do a full workout on it and it has become a lot easier and less tiring for me the more I use it.

View the original article here