![]() ![]() It can lead to many health problems, including heart attack, stroke, heart failure, angina, coronary artery disease, peripheral artery disease, kidney disease, vision loss, sexual dysfunction and more.įortunately, high blood pressure can often be prevented or controlled. Taking this medication as directed lowers your chance of having a heart attack or stroke.High blood pressure is dangerous. Remember, it’s important you keep taking any medication your doctor has given you to lower your blood pressure. We recommend checking in with your GP, practice nurse or pharmacist regularly to see if the lifestyle changes you have made are helping. Read more on making lifestyle changes stick. The best changes are the ones that will stick so focus on making one small change at a time. If you’ve been diagnosed with high blood pressure (hypertension), you may feel overwhelmed and not know where to start with making changes to your lifestyle. meditation or mindfulness – try an App.getting time away from your household and doing something for yourself.This will look different for different people and may include: One way we can help to manage stress is to take time out for ourselves. ![]() However, the things we tend to do to combat stress, such as eating convenience foods and drinking excess alcohol, can impact on our blood pressure in the long-term. But it hasn’t been proven that stress alone has a long-lasting effect on your blood pressure. Stress can raise your heart rate, and therefore your blood pressure, in the short term. If you think you may be drinking too much or know someone who has a drinking problem, talk to your GP or practice nurse.įor further information visit the Health Promotion Agency’s website. 2 The association can be seen in people who are healthy, people who have high blood pressure (hypertension) and people with other risk factors for heart disease. The greatest benefits to blood pressure are seen in people who are heavy drinkers who reduce the amount they drink. If you have high blood pressure, or you've been diagnosed with a heart condition, you may need more alcohol-free evenings or may need to completely cut out alcohol. If you drink alcohol and have high blood pressure, you will see an improvement just by drinking less.Ī good place to start is to aim for two or more evenings without alcohol each week. Learn more about plant-based, vegetarian and vegan diets. Load up your plate with plenty of these plant foods to help manage your blood pressure and nourish your heart: Whether it’s a snack, breakfast, or dinner meal, we could all do with eating more plant foods. What you put into your body can make a big difference to your blood pressure. Regularly parking a 5 or 10-minute walk away, getting off the bus a stop earlier or taking the stairs are all ways you can build movement into your day to help you to meet the physical activity recommendations without having to set foot in a gym. Moderate-intensity activity makes you breathe harder than normal but still able to talk. We recommend aiming to do at least 2.5 hours (150 minutes) of moderate-intensity physical activity each week. When we looked at the evidence on physical activity and heart health, people with high blood pressure who did regular physical activity were able to reduce their blood pressure (systolic blood pressure by 12.26 mmHg and diastolic blood pressure by 6.12 mmHg. Parking further away from work, the shops or when dropping kids at school is one way you can sit less and build more movement into your lifestyle. Build movement into your dayĮvery little bit of movement counts. However it’s important that you keep taking your medication as well.įor other people, these changes may be enough to control your blood pressure without starting medication.Įither way, if you’ve been told you’ve got high blood pressure, you’ll need to check in with your GP on a regular basis to manage the condition.Įven if you haven't been diagnosed with high blood pressure, following these tips will be good for your heart health. Over time these changes will become easier and part of your normal routine.įor people already on pills to reduce blood pressure, these are changes you can make alongside taking your medication. ![]() You may decide to focus on one or two changes to begin with. The good news is that there are lots of small steps you can take to modify your lifestyle and manage your blood pressure. These factors can all contribute to increasing our blood pressure and risk of heart disease. These days our lifestyles consist of less active jobs, a high intake of processed foods and greater stress. There aren’t always obvious signs your blood pressure is high so the best way to find out is to have it checked by your GP, nurse or pharmacist. If you are unable to manage your blood pressure and it stays high, it can lead to damaged arteries and increase your risk of heart disease. High blood pressure is also called hypertension. ![]()
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