People often expect high blood pressure to announce itself — a headache, a heaviness at the back of the neck, a feeling of tension. Usually it announces nothing. Many people learn they have it only when it is measured for some unrelated reason, or after it has already caused harm.
Know your number
Blood pressure is written as two numbers. Readings at or above roughly 140/90 on more than one occasion are generally taken as high, though your doctor will interpret yours against your age, your kidneys and whether you have diabetes. A single high reading in a busy chamber is not a diagnosis — which is why you may be asked to come back, or to measure at home.
Salt is the lever most within your control
The typical diet here carries a great deal of salt, and much of it is not the salt in cooking. Pickles, shutki, processed and packet foods, and the pinch of extra salt added at the table all add up. Removing the table salt alone makes a measurable difference for many people.
Food tastes flat for about two weeks after cutting salt, and then it does not. Taste adjusts faster than most people believe it will.
Tobacco in every form
Cigarettes and bidi are the obvious ones. Smokeless tobacco — jarda, gul, sadapata taken with paan — is widely used and widely assumed to be harmless. It is not; it raises cardiovascular risk too. Stopping is difficult, and worth asking for help with.
Why medicines get stopped, and why they should not be
The commonest reason blood pressure stays uncontrolled is that people stop treatment once they feel well — which, since it caused no symptoms to begin with, is almost immediately. Blood pressure treatment usually continues long term. If a medicine causes a side effect you dislike, there are alternatives; the answer is a conversation, not silence.
Measuring at home
An upper-arm digital monitor is more reliable than a wrist device. Sit quietly for five minutes first, back supported, feet flat, arm at heart level, and do not measure straight after tea, a cigarette or a rush upstairs. Take two readings a minute apart, and write both down with the date.
What untreated pressure eventually costs
Stroke, heart attack, heart failure, kidney failure and damage to the small vessels of the eye all become substantially more likely. Every one of these is far harder to treat than the blood pressure that led to it.
This article is general health information, not a diagnosis. For anything specific to you, please come to the chamber or call 01357-296604 for a serial.
