Unchecked high blood pressure over the years rips tiny holes in the smallest vessels of your brain, kidneys and eyes – let’s talk about what to do about it.
Arteries branch into microscopic vessels in your organs. Persistently high blood pressure shreds them, leading to strokes and kidney failure amongst other problems.
When the blood pressure rises beyond what the blood vessels can tolerate, eventually (we are talking about over years and decades) these tiny vessels begin to break down. If this happens in the brain – this translates into a stroke. If this happens in the kidneys – this translates into chronic kidney disease (high blood pressure and diabetes are the 2 main causes of chronic kidney disease), so the time to care about your blood pressure is now, not after you have a stroke.
So what should your blood pressure be and what can you do about it?
One of the core things I want you to take from this is that it’s not so important to me what your blood pressure was at one visit with your doctor or that time when you were really stressed. What is more important is where does your blood pressure hang out more often than not (though if your blood pressure easily goes up in an office it tells me it likely easily rises in other stressful situations). I want you to be your own blood pressure tracker.
Take a reading in the morning and one in the evening for the next week and average them out. Just be an observer at first so you have some data points.
In an ideal world, a blood pressure a little bit below 120/80 would be beautiful, but we don’t live in an ideal world and sometimes if you are older and have other medical conditions that’s sometimes hard to achieve and not always safe, so we will often settle for below 140/90, though if you have some creeping up rising sugars or diabetes, we will need tighter control (<130/80) because unfortunately excess sugar in the bloodstream will make things more inflamed in general.
So before we start piling on the medications, what can you do to make things better?
First, I want to make sure you are avoiding these:
- NSAIDs (eg. Advil/ibuprofen, naproxen)
- Licorice root
- Decongestants eg. Advil cold and sinus, pseudoephedrine
- Energy drinks/excess caffeine
- Smoking – no surprise there
- We’ll talk about salt more below
One thing that will elevate your blood pressure over time is lack of physical exercise. I know it sounds counterintuitive because doesn’t moving and exercising raise your blood pressure? Yes, you are correct but only transiently and then you get a flooding of all the helpful chemicals that help to lower your blood pressure and make your organs well perfused.
Now, I don’t want to make it sound like just picking up exercising will fix your blood pressure. It might in mild cases, but unfortunately, it’s often not enough but it can certainly alter how much medication you will need and you will overall feel better, so don’t just do it for your blood pressure, do it because it makes you feel alive.
Eat your greens so you can make more nitric oxide which helps to open up your blood vessels so they are not so tight. Become friends with garlic and magnesium. Make your own meals. Fall in love with food that nourishes you and does not deplete you.
Track to see if your salt intake affects your blood pressure readings or not to see if you fall into a “salt sensitive” category, because not everyone will be. Try eating home cooked meals for a week and skip any processed food – then see what your blood pressure does. That’s a real-life salt sensitivity test.
Despite all your beautiful consistent efforts, your blood pressure may still be elevated. Don’t be discouraged, all your efforts will not go unnoticed by your body even if your blood pressure does not go down. With all the health advice on the internet these days, don’t fall for the next supplement that will promise to reverse all the ailments, continue to consistently move, make your meals and watch your body slowly feel more at ease and energetic.
If you need a blood pressure medication, it’s not a personal failure. Work with the body you have and take it day by day. We all have something that we wouldn’t choose.
The most powerful thing you can do today is getting curious about your body and staying consistent with small steps.
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