Posts Tagged ‘high blood pressure’
Salt and High Blood Pressure
One way to avoid hypertension and high blood pressure may be limit your amount of salt. In particular, a diet high in salt may increase your level of anxiety. This is because excessive salt will cause your body to lower its level of potassium. With low potassium levels, the body may experience an increase level of anxiety, which has been linked to short term high blood pressure.
Another way in which salt can increase blood pressure is the effects it has on the circulatory system. Salt has been shown to cause fluid retention, which places an increase demand on the heart. Overtime, some believe this can lead to hypertension and high blood pressure.
Clearly, many people are looking to lower their high blood pressure. If there is a simple lifestyle change that can accomplish this task, then this could have the same result as taking medication, without the harmful side effects. Research has shown the links between salt and high blood pressure. These results have demonstrated that salt can cause at least short term high blood pressure, but some believe these harmful effects may have a long lasting impact on your blood pressure.
What Can Cause High Blood Pressure?
First, we will discuss the temporary or non-threatening causes of high blood pressure. Certain lifestyle choices can give a temporary increase in the blood pressure reading. These include stress, cold external temperatures, and exercise. Clearly, we can see that a visit to the doctor’s office could potentially bring on any of these factors. For example, if someone does not like to go to the doctor’s office, they could feel a certain level of stress. Are you late for your appointment? Well, this could not only cause stress, but could also induce some unexpected exercise as you make your way up a set of stairs to get to your doctor’s office.
On the other hand, a blood pressure reading could be a critical signal of more dangerous health problems, For example, if a blood pressure is high over a period of time, the heart, kidneys, and blood vessels could all begin to show signs of breaking down under the strain. The result could be coronary artery disease, heart attack, or stroke. Therefore maintaining a regular measurement of your blood pressure is essential to monitor the warning signs that a more serious health risk could be coming.
As we have discussed, high blood pressure can be brought on by a variety of factors. These could range from being non-critical to possibly life threatening. Therefore, if your health care provider believes you may have high blood pressure, it is important to possibly increase the frequency of your blood pressure measurements, which would be likely recommended by your doctor. One way to do this, is through the use of a home blood pressure monitor. Certainly, this will take some of the temporary causes out of the list of possibilities (stress, cold temperatures, etc.). In addition, this will allow you to take frequent measurements and average these results out over time in order to provide an accurate reading for your long term health.

