Reducing blood pressure
by Christian Goodman
Blood pressure is called “hypertension” in the medical world. When your blood pressure is consistently above the ideal 120/80, you are generally considered “hypertensive”. A high blood pressure is genetically predisposed in some individuals, but aside from genes, there are other factors that also contribute to it.
To make you better understand high blood pressure or hypertension, you should know what hypertension really is. When your blood pressure is taken, what is actually measured is the amount of pressure your blood is exerting against the walls of your blood vessels. When you get a higher number, it means that more pressure is being forced against those walls.
Think of a balloon being filled with water. As more and more water fills the balloon, it stretches to accommodate it…to a point. As it gets very full, you can easily see the balloon thinning out, and if you continue putting water into it, eventually it will stretch itself to the breaking point.
If you allow your blood pressure to get high and remain there unchecked, your vessels will suffer the same fate as the overfilled balloon. They can and will eventually burst. The location of the burst vessel determines the severity of the results. If it’s a brain vessel, you can have a stroke. If it’s a vessel that feeds blood to the heart, you can have a heart attack or suffer complete heart failure.
‘Silent killer’ is what high blood pressure is often referred as. One day you feel fine and you don’t feel any symptomsthen the pressure becomes so great that it causes a life-threatening episode.
The numbers of your blood pressure reading are called systolic and diastolic pressure. The systolic pressure is the top number and indicates how much pressure is within the blood vessels every time your heart beats or pumps blood out. The diastolic pressure is the bottom number and indicates how much pressure exists within the blood vessels in between beats, or when your heart is at rest.
This is the reason why doctors are more critical of the bottom number. If your diastolic pressure is over 80, and especially once it gets over 90, it means that a great amount of pressure is being exerted on your vessels even though your heart is not working, or is at rest. With high blood pressure, the spurting force of the blood as it leaves the heart the next time could be the one that proves to be too much.
So how do you lower your blood pressure? If you are overweight, lose those excess pounds. If your are overly stressed, avoid and eliminate the causes of stress. If you are smoking, stop. And if you are sedentary, exercise more.
Or try something a little easier, just as effective and even quicker, my Hypertension Program I created to help reduce your chance of heart attack or stroke by lowering your blood pressure to acceptable levels. It doesn’t involve drastic lifestyle changes or hours of sweating in a gym.
It’s a series of easy, simple exercises which only take a few minutes a day and which you can do with little effort. The impact it will have on your blood pressure numbers is nothing short of life-saving.
Christian Goodman is a well known researcher and the creator of the natural health blog. His most recent work is the Lower Blood Pressure program, which has now assisted thousands of people in managing high blood pressure.