Exercise

It seems as though many Americans are living a life that leads to high blood pressure or hypertension.  We are now seeing children with high blood pressure that goes hand in hand with their obesity.

As people age, the situation gets worse. Nearly half of all older Americans have hypertension even if they are not over weight. This disease makes people five times more prone to strokes, three times more likely to have a heart attack, and two to three times more likely to experience a heart failure.

One of the biggest problems with this disease is that nearly one third of the people who have hypertension do not know it because they never feel any symptoms.  Occasionally someone will say they have a headache and therefore their blood pressure must be high, but according to doctors, a headache is not a hypertension symptom.

Over time the force of that excessive pressure damages the inside surface of your blood vessels.

However, according to experts, hypertension is not unavoidable. Reducing salt intake, adopting a healthy diet, losing weight and exercising can all help prevent hypertension.

Although eating a low fat diet will help, the most significant single thing that you can do is to exercise. And just as exercise strengthens and improves limb muscles, it also enhances the health of the heart muscles.

It may seem that taking a little pill is the answer to hypertension.  In the case of excessively high pressure, that pill could save your life.  However, the best defense is exercise. 

With a regular exercise program as simply as walking you can reduce your dependance on pills.  Do not stop taking your hypertension pills without seeing your doctor.  Only your health care giver can determine your risk and if you have a current need for medication.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Exercise and Disease. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.