Controlling Your Blood Pressure Archive

Exercise, healthy eating, and appropriate treatment will protect the heart's pumping power.

Heart failure doesn't mean your heart stops working; it means the heart has lost some of its strength and can no longer deliver enough oxygen-enriched blood to meet all of the body's demands during physical activity. Heart failure risk grows with age, and more than 650,000 Americans will be diagnosed with the condition this year.

Home blood pressure monitoring leads to better control of high blood pressure within six months, according to research published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers pooled the findings of 52 separate studies of people with high blood pressure who checked their numbers with a home monitor. Within six months, systolic blood pressures (the upper number) dropped an average of about 4 mm Hg and diastolic pressures (the lower number) fell more than 2 mm Hg.

A drop of a few points in blood pressure may not seem like much, but it represents substantially less illness if sustained over the long term. Inadequately controlled high blood pressure raises the risk for heart disease, kidney disease, and stroke. For many people, home blood pressure monitoring provides more accurate readings, motivation to stick with diet and exercise plans, and feedback on how well medications are working.

Blood pressure medications might lower your risk for Alzheimer's and other types of dementia.

Tracking your blood pressure readings over time will help you and your doctor make more educated treatment decisions.

For the millions of women with high blood pressure, intermittent blood pressure checks at the doctor's office might not be enough. Health organizations such as the American Heart Association and American Society of Hypertension (hypertension is the medical term for high blood pressure) recommend that people with high blood pressure monitor their readings more often at home.

Q. I had been checking my blood pressure regularly for several years and it has never been high. But now multiple checks by my doctor have shown that my blood pressure is high. Why could that be?

A. Blood pressure that goes up when a person sees a doctor or nurse is called white-coat syndrome or white-coat hypertension. This condition is not as bad as blood pressure that is high all the time. But it is not as good as having normal blood pressure all the time, including during a doctor's visit.

Most of the 70 million Americans with high blood pressure need more help lowering their cholesterol levels, nationwide data reveal.

More than 75% of people with high blood pressure have high LDL cholesterol levels. But less than a third of people with these two heart disease risk factors keep both under control, an analysis of national survey data shows. The study, led by Dr. Brent Egan of the University of South Carolina, was published in the journal Circulation.

It helps reduce stress and anxiety, which can lower heart rate and blood pressure while reducing harmful hormones.

There's more to heart attack and stroke prevention than medications, exercise, and diet. The latest research confirms that people who practice meditation are significantly less likely to have a heart attack or stroke or die within five years. "Meditation can be a useful part of cardiovascular risk reduction," says cardiologist Dr. Deepak Bhatt, a professor at Harvard Medical School. "I do recommend it, along with diet and exercise. It can also help decrease the sense of stress and anxiety."

How does meditation affect you physiologically? "It appears to produce changes in brain activity. It also can lower your heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, oxygen consumption, adrenaline levels, and levels of cortisol, a hormone released in response to stress," says Dr. Bhatt.

Diuretics are usually prescribed as a first-line treatment for high blood pressure, though many people require additional drugs for blood pressure management, such as beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, or angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs). Diuretics help lower blood pressure by reducing the amount of sodium and water in the body—the lower the volume of fluid in the bloodstream, the less pressure there is on the walls of the arteries. They're also prescribed for kidney disorders, liver disease, and fluid retention caused by heart failure.

There are three main types of diuretics

Kidneys consist of millions of tiny winding tubes (tubules).

Even though there are reports of possible danger from extremely low sodium intake, Harvard experts agree: Less salt is better.

Don't believe everything you hear—especially if you've heard you no longer have to worry about sodium, the too-much-is-bad-for-you part of salt.