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.
