Lifestyle – Its Effect on Blood Pressure

The one main thing to be looked at when we find out that we have high blood pressure is lifestyle. It really can make a big difference, but it is harder to change than we might think. It’s easy to say don’t eat this and don’t drink that, but in reality it is not an easy thing to do.

Discipline and willpower is what is needed in bucket loads to suddenly change the way we live our lives. If a person has Hypertension then they can make a big difference by changing their lifestyles. Sometimes a few changes is all that is needed to bring the blood pressure down to a normal level. Once we get it back to a normal level doesn’t mean we can go back to how we were living our life before, we have to maintain our new way of living.

An obvious change can be to loose weight if we are overweight, this can have a big impact on lowering blood pressure. A good way to lose weight effectively is to stop eating takeouts and processed foods and start eating freshly prepared food, with fresh vegetables and fruit. This coupled with a good exercise routine will see the weight start to fall (Please get Doctors advice before starting an exercise routine). Crash diets will not work, the only way to lose weight properly is to eat healthy foods and exercise.

Other obvious lifestyle changes are to give up smoking, cut down on alcohol intake and cut down on salt intake. There are many more things we can do to normalize blood pressure but as you can see from these few things they are easy to write and easy to read and say but how easy are they to sustain as a permanent change.

The main engine in our bodies, the heart needs good food and exercise to keep it healthy and we owe it to ourselves to provide it with just that, the heart works hard for us day in day out and we need to respect it. So whether you have hypertension or not, take a look at your own lifestyle and see if there are a few changes you can make to help keep you heart that little bit healthier.