Alcohol And High Blood Pressure

Most people who find themselves drinking alcohol excessively are ignorant of what it might lead them to. There are many consequences of drinking too much alcohol which are very dangerous to your health. One of the biggest threat of excessive drinking is high blood pressure. Although there are other major causes of high blood pressure, experts were able to discover that too much drinking of alcohol greatly increases your blood pressure.

It is therefore very important for you to understand that when you drink alcohol excessively, it will affect your blood system. You must know that your health is determined by your blood pressure. Perhaps you may be wondering how does drinking alcohol affects your blood pressure. I want you to know that your drinking alcohol continously will lead to other health problems in your body which in turn affects your blood pressure.

Let us see how alcohol affects your blood presssure. Do you know that drinking alcohol affects your kidneys? When you drink alcohol excessively, it exacts pressure on the your arteries, causing the blood to flow at high pressure. This is one of the causes of high blood pressure in your body. So the more you drink, the more pressure you exact on your arteries and the more your blood pressure increases.

It is also very important that if you are a woman, you must stop drinking alcohol because your level of tolerance to high blood pressure is minimal compared to that of men. Therefore you must avoid drinking alcohol excessively as it will be very risky and dangerous to your health.

Another negative effects of drinking alcohol is overweight. When you drink more alcohol, you add more weight because alcohol itself contains more calories. You must know that when you increase weight, you are also increasing the level of fat in your body. This fat usually add unnecessary pressure to your blood arteries, causing less blood to flow at high pressure. So, each time you drink more alcohol, you are increasing your blood pressure.

Finally friend, I want you to understand that drinking alcohol is one of the major causes of high blood pressure because it has a direct negative effect on your blood stream. As you drink alcohol excessively, you are exposing your health to more dangers in addition to high blood pressure. Therefore you must begin to address your drinking addiction if you must keep a good health. I also recommend you to your doctor for more professional advice if you must stop drinking alcohol now. Also see your doctor if you are already developing a high blood pressure today.

They are the biggest killers in America: Diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and heart disease. The most common causes of these deadly conditions are: Physical inactivity, fattening snacks and beverages, obesity, stress, and smoking. The shocking news is that these diseases are so easily preventable.
A frequent cause of blame is the unhealthy food choices people make regularly. It’s okay to splurge once in a while, but it is the habits you follow daily that will determine your overall health. Constantly consuming chips, bacon, cakes, sugary drinks, candy, sausage, and cigarettes will get you nothing but poor health, deadly diseases, and a ticket straight to heaven prematurely.
According to the CDC over 63% (that’s over 180 million) of the US population is overweight or obese and is physically inactive, resulting in tens of millions who have chronic deadly, but preventable, conditions such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, and pre-diabetes. Recently the CDC reported that more than 70% (over 1.7 million) of all causes of death in America are caused by only three preventable factors: obesity, sedentary lifestyles, and smoking. The very fact that these factors are easily preventable is heartbreaking.
One of the major contributors to poor health is the excessive consumption of cholesterol. The body produces over 85% of the cholesterol we need and the sugar stores in our liver and muscles remain saturated due to physical inactivity. Because we are largely a couch-potato society and the food we consume every day is loaded with animal-based fats, the extra fat gets dumped into our arteries, belly areas, and under the skin all over our bodies.
Another major contributor to deadly diseases, poor health, and premature aging and death is physical inactivity. Most of us sit throughout an entire workday then go home and sit in front of the TV for another 5 to 6 hours while consuming large fatty meals, snacks, and sugary or alcoholic beverages that are rich in saturated fats, salt, and sugar, all of which contribute to increased belly fat. Shockingly, belly fat is the most dangerous kind because it causes inflammation in the arteries contributing to plaque build up in the arteries and insulin resistance leading to heart attacks and diabetes.
Yet another common issue is that people are unaware of how unhealthy the foods they consume are. When people don’t read nutrition labels they tend to consume very dense food and sugary beverages that are nutrient deficient. These foods are readily available in fast food restaurants and vending machines and contain loads of sugar, fat, and unwanted calories. Sugary soft drinks (which alone contribute to over 33% of all US obesity), sugary lemonade, sweetened iced tea, smoothies, lattes, and frappucinos, which contain loads of sugar and fat that further contribute to the accumulation of belly fat, make you more of a magnet to all sorts of deadly, but preventable, diseases. One of the worst mistakes people make as well is skipping meals which makes the body more efficient at storing and gaining fat weight.
Fortunately there are important steps to help you make balanced food and activity choices and help you start a lifestyle makeover process which will be your shield against deadly diseases as you age gracefully:
• If you have any chronic disease(s) take your medications as prescribed.
• Eat 3 main balanced meals, reduce your portion sizes, and raise your fiber intake.
• Consume 2 fruit and nuts snacks between meals.
• Switch all sugary drinks to water or diet soft drinks. Sweeten all other hot or cold beverages with artificial sweeteners or sugar-free flavoring powders. Limit all non-water beverages to a couple a day.
• Increase your daily walking activity to over 10,000 steps a day by making more frequent trips at home, the office, while shopping, and anywhere else.
The good news is that diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic diseases can be prevented, managed, and reversed with your own choices, actions and a lifestyle makeover. Now is the time to start putting these tips to good use and begin feeling better and living healthier right away!

In recent years changes in diet and lifestyle in many western societies have led to an increase in the number of people suffering from high blood pressure.
High blood pressure (otherwise known as hypertension, or more correctly arterial hypertension) is a serious condition which rarely carries any symptoms and which, if not detected and treated, can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure, arterial aneurysm or renal failure – all of which are series life-threatening conditions.
So just what is high blood pressure and what causes it?
The arteries of your body and constantly filled with blood which exerts a normal “background” pressure on the walls of the arteries. As the heart pumps freshly oxygenated blood around the body it forces this blood into the arteries momentarily raising the pressure exerted on the walls of the arteries during each beat of the heart. These two pressures are known as the systolic pressure (the higher pumping pressure of the heart) and the diastolic pressure (the lower “background” pressure).
Normal levels of blood pressure vary from individual to individual but, on average, systolic pressure should be around 120 mm Hg (millimeters of mercury measured on a manometer) and diastolic pressure should be about 80 mm Hg. This is ordinarily expressed as a blood pressure of 120/80.
If your blood pressure starts to rise and remains at a level above 120/80 then you are described as being “prehypertensive” and, while this is not serious in itself, it is an indication that you may be at risk of developing hypertension and the problems associated with it. Once your blood pressure reaches, and maintains, a level of 140/90 or above you are said to be suffering from hypertension and action needs to be taken to reduce your blood pressure.
But what causes your blood pressure to rise and remain elevated?
Well, there are several factors at play here and the first is a group over which you have little, if any, control. This group includes a low birth weight, a variety of genetic factors, certain forms of diabetes (in particular type 2 diabetes) and your age (as we grow older our arteries tend to become fibrous and lose their elasticity, resulting in a smaller cross-sectional area through which the blood can flow).
The second group of factors is much more within your control and includes leading a sedentary lifestyle, high levels of salt and/or saturated fats in the diet, being overweight, smoking, alcohol abuse, stress and working in certain occupations such as flying or motorway maintenance, which involves exposure to long periods of high level roadway noise.
The vast majority of these factors are of course treatable and, in many cases, a simple adjustment to your diet and the addition of some form of exercise into your daily routine is all that is needed to solve the problem. The difficulty however is that, without any real symptoms, most people simply don’t know that they are suffering from high blood pressure in the first place.
So how do you solve the problem?
Fortunately the answer to this question is very simple. All you need to do is to pop into your doctor’s office on a regular basis (for most of us a couple of times a year will do the trick) and ask the doctor, or practice nurse, to check your blood pressure. The whole process is painless, simple and fast and will give you peace of mind and possibly save your doctor a lot of time, work and expense later on when you are forced to present yourself at his office once hypertension has set in.
If, like most people, you are not so keen on visiting your doctor then an excellent alternative today is to simply monitor your own blood pressure at home. A wide range of easy to operate and relatively inexpensive monitors are available today, allowing you to keep an eye on your own health, and that of your family, in the comfort and privacy of your own home.

Menopause and High Blood Pressure

It has often been said that High Blood Pressure is very much an equal opportunity disease and condition in that it is just as likely to affect women as it is men.

The surprising nature of High Blood Pressure and it’s affect on women is that three out of very four women with high blood pressure are aware of the fact that they have it but research has shown that less than one out of every three women are making any attempt to control their high blood pressure.

I guess as far as Women and High Blood Pressure are concerned the debate falls pretty much into two topics: Menopause and High Blood Pressure and is there a connection and High Blood Pressure and Pregnancy. This article will attempt to consider the relationship between the Menopause and HighBlood Pressure.

These are two key occurrences in a Woman’s life? How do I know? Firstly I am a father and I well remember (fondly) the entire period of my wife’s pregnancy and all that entailed. The second subject? Well let’s just say I know (at the risk of incurring the ire of “she who must be obeyed”) and leave it at that.

The Menopause and High Blood Pressure is probably a combination of the “big guy upstairs” reminding us that life really isn’t fair and if having to come to terms with a whole series of unfortunate physical changes isn’t enough then along comes high blood pressure to boot when you least expect it!

So what does it all entail? Does the onset of the menopause affect high blood pressure?

Before the menopause, women tend to have slightly lower diastolic pressure and systolic pressure than the men do. As has been mentioned on quite a few occasions, it is after the menopause that the systolic pressure in women increases by about 5 mm Hg.

These increases can be attributed to a number of factors partly related to potential increased salt sensitivity and potential weight gain that in turn are associated with Hormone changes that occur during menopause. Sadly, Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) that many women either undertake voluntarily or have prescribed for them may also contribute to increases in blood pressure. An additional factor to take into consideration here also is that women who are over 50 who also take HRT may also have a small increase on average systolic pressure (1-2 mm Hg). These women are 25 percent more likely to suffer from high blood pressure than are women who don’t take HRT.

The important aspect to remember in all of this is that there are steps that can be taken to control any onset of high blood pressure after the menopause. Basically these revolve around various basic lifestyle changes that can bring a tremendous benefit.

You would not realise how much benefit you could achieve from reducing Sodium in your diet, increase the level of physical activity, generally aim to keep to a fairly healthy diet i.e. lost of fresh fruit and vegetables etc and cutting back and being sensible with the time honoured twin vices of Alcohol and Tobacco!

It is important to realise however that not all cases of high blood pressure are going to be dealt with successfully just through lifestyle changes. Sometimes that just isn’t possible and medication has an important bearing on these matters also. Of the wide range of medication available for the treatment of high blood pressure, in these cases diuretics have shown to be extremely effective as many women have reported that incidences of general fluid retention tend to rise with the onset of the menopause.