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High Blood Pressure — How Can Stress Contribute to It?

Learn to control high BP

By Richard AppiahPublished 2 years ago 14 min read
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High Blood Pressure — How Can Stress Contribute to It?
Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash

High blood pressure occurs as your blood flows through your arteries at a higher pressure than normal. Lots of different factors can contribute to high blood pressure.

A measurement that shows the amount of force in your blood as it passes through your arteries. A clear coronary artery is classified as a blood vessel that takes the most volume of the blood away.

Daily, the heart pounds, and it carries blood downstream. When the blood flow happens, this puts pressure on the walls. This is considered blood pressure.

If your blood pressure remains high or is too high for a long time for too long, it can have negative effects on your wellbeing. At a much higher risk than people who don’t smoke, untreated high blood pressure puts you in danger of stroke, heart disease, a heart attack, and heart failure.

There are 2 types of high blood pressure.

1. Primary hypertension.

This is often called extreme high blood pressure. It is considered a hypertensive crisis because there is no revealed explanation for your high blood pressure.

This is the most common kind of high blood pressure. Normally, this form of blood pressure occurs over a very long period of time. It seems like a lot of it is because of your lifestyle, climate, and how your body changes as you age.

2. Secondary hypertension.

If you have high blood pressure, that is because a health condition or medicine is leading to it. Secondary hypertension can be caused by such conditions as:

The use of the kidney.

Hypothalamic disorders or adrenal issues.

Any pharmacological products.

What are the symptoms of high blood pressure?

It is not unusual among most people to not notice high blood pressure. High blood pressure can be dangerous to your well-being. It’s vital to have blood pressure tests regularly to keep you from suffering.

A small number of people who use e-cigarettes will experience headaches nosebleeds or shortness of breath from high blood pressure. Even, these symptoms can be triggered by a wide variety of factors (serious or non-serious).

As most people know, signs typically appear after a condition reaches a dangerously elevated blood pressure level for a certain period of time.

What causes high blood pressure?

Diet, medication, lifestyle, age, and genetics may cause high blood pressure. Your doctor will be able to help you figure out what could be causing your symptoms.

There are common factors that can raise your blood pressure, including:

A content of salt, and/or in food.

Consider the possible influence of your family history particularly if someone in your family has high blood pressure.

A lack of enough physical activity.

At an older age (the older you are, the more likely you are to have high blood pressure).

Getting out of shape or being overweight.

Race:non-Hispanic black people are more likely to have a high blood pressure than people of other races

Some birth control pills and other medications may have side effects.

How does high blood pressure (hypertension) get diagnosed?

It can be diagnosed by your doctor with a blood pressure monitor. This is a common test doctor might do at any visit. A nurse will wear a practical armband on your upper arm.

A small pump is connected to an air atomizer that measures a meter. To refill the atomizer, the user with hold down the pump. Your skin will feel tight around your arm.

Then the meter will drop, and the person will breathe in deeply. Using this blood pressure product, I’m able to spit out 2 numbers that are critical in determining my blood pressure.

The top number is your blood sugar level (the peak blood pressure when your heart is squeezing blood out). The bottom number in this meter is your reading (the pressure when your heart is overflowing with blood).

You can also hear the doctor or nurse say your blood pressure is 120 on the high side of 80.

The average blood pressure of a healthy person is less than 120 on top and less than 80 on the bottom.

Using the top and bottom percents you will range from prehypertension at 120–139 and 80–89.

High blood pressure is step one. Stage one is 140–159 up and down the blood pressure gauge.

Hypertension, stage 2 means that the blood pressure is at 160 or above on top and 100 and over on the bottom.

If the blood pressure is on the higher side, getting it tested more regularly is a good idea. After the age of eighteen, you can get your blood pressure tested at least once every two years.

If you have high blood pressure in the past, then do this more frequently, maybe each day.

Treatment for high blood pressure.

The easiest way to decrease your blood pressure to prevent high blood pressure is to make lifestyle improvements to help lower your blood pressure and reduce your heart disease risk.

They may even want to prescribe some form of medication to lower the pressure in your body. This drug acts as an antihypertensive.

The treatment aims to get your blood pressure down to a healthy level. Your doctor can prescribe a medication that’s easy to take and has few side effects, and few if any, side effects.

This therapy has very high effectiveness. If your blood pressure can only be managed by using a drug like aspirin, you will have to take the medication for the rest of your life.

The drugs you use to regulate your blood pressure can be very many and involve several to this. Check to speak with your doctor before doing something you might regret. You can increase your risk for heart attacks and strokes by not using a condom.

Stress and high blood pressure: What’s the connection?

People who have long-term high blood pressure do not correlate with stress, but reducing stress may affect blood pressure, even though it is not a direct stressor.

When conditions are excessively stressful, people’s stress hormone levels can temporarily increase. But long-term elevated blood pressure can grow from stressful situations.

Could the short-term effects of traumatic events (activities, experiences, accidents) add up and inevitably create high blood pressure in the long term? The researchers aren’t aware.

As exercise reduces your stress hormones, three to five minutes of moderate to light exercise per day can also help.

And much for those that already have high blood pressure, if you keep your stress level in a healthy range and your life, this will help you control your blood pressure over time.

Stress-reducing activities can lower your blood pressure

If you minimize your stress level, likely, it won’t be mirrored in your blood pressure over time. These different treatments greatly boost your health, but they are much closer to helping you deal with stress.

There are many health improvements in behavior that are related to stress control strategies like those that minimize blood pressure.

There are several different methods for controlling tension. For instance,

If you feel rushed most of the day, then take some time to check your to-do list and your calendar. Concentrate on the tasks that will adequately clock up time but won’t be too critical to you. If you find yourself enjoying anything less, increase the time spent on it.

It is recommended that you take deep breathes to relax.

Being physically active is a normal stress fighter. Be sure to get your doctor’s approval if you plan to start an exercise routine, particularly if you’re diagnosed with high blood pressure,

you are in excellent health, and you’re not likely to have any background or signs suggesting that you have a higher risk of cardiovascular injury.

Yoga and meditation will improve the body and help you to relax. Often after you have mastered these strategies, you might be able to decrease your blood pressure by 5 mm Hg or more.

If you don’t get enough, night sleep, your problems may seem worse than they are in fact.

If things go wrong, try to avoid the urge to whine. Approach a situation with a change of attitude. We must assume we will find solutions.

The goal is to find what works the best for you. Think outside of the box and be open-minded. Select those tactics, take any steps and enjoy the benefits it brings.

How does stress affect the body?

Nobody experiences tension at every given moment, but exhaustion does occur. But it’s when those stresses go unaddressed and build up over time that we’re left with chronic stress,” explains Dr. Michael Kayal, a cardiologist at Geisinger Community Medical Center, “which may show up in the body as physical symptoms.” Some of these symptoms include:

Asleep disorder.

Symptoms of depression or anxiety.

Extreme nausea.

Diarrheal disorder

To trigger headaches.

Your heart is pounding too hard.

An achy body.

Long term stress can increase those stress responses that can then raise BP. When people are feeling anxious, their blood pressure can be elevated.

Since high BP doesn’t usually affect the body in various ways, when the condition begins, we often have no idea when it occurs.

Over a prolonged period, untreated high BP (also called hypertension) can increase the risk of developing heart disease or put you at a higher risk of having a heart attack or stroke.

How to cope with stress.

By Elisa Ventur on Unsplash

The good news is that handling stress is easy, and with practice it is free. Instead of concentrating on this one task, consider envisioning all the other simple and fun things you might get accomplished.

Physical exercise is good for one’s heart. That medication decreases the levels of stress and reduces BP, making you feel better.

When you exercise, the body releases endorphins, which are the chemicals responsible for making you feel healthy. You want to spend 20 minutes at a time, 3–4 days a week, doing something aerobic like walking, biking, swimming, or lifting weights to get your blood flowing.

Even though many people rely on coffee (caffeine) to get them through each day, too much caffeine can really raise the stress levels.

Not only does coffee exist, but so does tea, chocolate, several sodas, and some drugs that contain caffeine.

There is research that indicates that cutting down the consumption of caffeine will reduce BP and lessen some of the physical symptoms of stress, such as an elevated heart rate and feeling jittery.

It’s said that laughter is good medicine and, in this case, it’s a particularly good one. Laughs are good for you and just make you feel better. Any ideas are to read a joke book, be funny with your family, or watch a comedy (e.g. “Family Guy”) and laugh your tension away slowly.

Talk to the people you love

By Jim Reardan on Unsplash

Since they are limited in length and free to watch, phone calls, video chats, and texting all are perfect ways to remain connected with friends and family.

Other ways talking about something, even something as basic as how you cooked the dinner will re-energize and even soothe you.

For people who are “stressed out” during the day, practicing deep breathing or meditation for a few minutes a day will help calm you down.

For background, take a look at the different meditation and mindfulness applications that are available to download on your mobile phone or tablet.

If you have a personal assistant who can support you with breathing, you can ask it to extend or even meditate. There is also a great supply of guided meditation recordings online.

When we do not get enough rest, we appear to feel down. Lack of sleep can also lead to poor judgment and brain fog. One must take time for oneself and make sure you are getting enough rest.

Staying up late at night can make one feel tired the next day. A brief afternoon nap after breakfast or a few minutes earlier, however, can help provide enough restful sleep.

Take some time off and relax. It’s perfectly fine to do whatever you want during that time, whether it be gardening, binge-watching your favorite show, or taking a stroll. Dr. Kayal would suggest that.

You shouldn’t ignore white coat hypertension.

Some patients experience white coat hypertension, which is HBP while the patient is in the doctor’s office but not in other health settings.

For these patients, it is important to control their BP at home or if they are in the hospital, they can wear an ambulatory BP monitor, which keeps track of their BP every thirty minutes for 24 hours.

Many years ago white coat hypertension was assumed to be simply nervousness and anxiety from the white coats.

In a study published in the journal Hypertension, people who are white coat hypertensive are at a higher risk for experiencing sustained high BP as well as the severity of BPH symptoms than people with normotension.

There is growing evidence that stress, anxiety, and/or emotional sensitivity can cause people to have a harder time controlling their heart rates.

Learning to cope with stress can help.

Scientists have said that stress from lack of sleep and hypertension have often been linked together; however, researchers are still looking into a clear causal association between the two.

And if you are hypertensive, it is always good practice to try and relax.

When you are nervous, the body sends some of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol into your bloodstream. Acute psychostimulant drugs have several detrimental effects.

They cause a temporary increase in BP, cause the heart to pump faster, and cause the blood vessels to get narrowed. If you can get rid of the unpleasant situation, the BP will return to its usual stage.

Constant tension allows the body to remain in a flexed, highly-charged state that takes longer than a normal state of mind.

Stress does not directly affect BP, but even strong coping skills affect BP. In addition to smoking, drinking alcohol, and eating too much, people with high BP often attempt to regulate the problem by overeating and opposing smoking.

Although medications are harming our bodies, even more, healthy coping strategies such as running, doing yoga, and meditating can all help lower the pressure.

Good sleep can prevent and manage high blood pressure.

Most people experience a dip in BP during the deepest stage of sleep (also known as slow-wave sleep), which is the body’s natural and healthy response to sleep.

By bruce mars on Unsplash

Not giving yourself a night digest is a risk factor for being at risk for heart disease and can increase daytime pressure.

Most people spend a lot of the night in 90 minutes to 2 hour-long episodes of slow-wave sleep. A new study published in

Hypertension showed that men who got less slow-wave sleep were at a higher risk for hypertension than men who got more deep sleep. Deep sleep is the deepest period of rest.

Sleep conditions, including breathing disorders and age, can all play a part in the amount of deep sleep you get. However, there are steps you can take to ensure a good night’s sleep.

Getting a decent seven to eight hours of sleep at night, keeping a regular sleep schedule, and making a schedule for being more involved during the day would help increase the quality of your sleep.

Excessive salt raises blood pressure.

By Josh Massey on Unsplash

Too much salt will cause your body to hold water which makes your heart and blood vessels work harder and increase BP.

People who have high BP or are at risk for developing high BP must restrict their sodium consumption to less than 3/4 of a teaspoon (1.5 grams) of salt daily.

The average dietary allowance of sodium for adults is 2,400 mg a day. Adults over 50 need 3,400 mg and adults of black race or ethnicity will need 7,600 mg sodium daily.

Everyone can limit their intake of salt, while levels are common. To keep your BP at a stable level, respect the daily sodium recommendations of 2,300 mg per day.

Most dietary sodium is found in refined packaged foods. Rules of thumb are to select foods with 5 percent or less of the daily value of sodium per serving and opt for fresh poultry, fish, and lean meats, rather than frozen, smoked, or refined.

Similarly, fresh or frozen vegetables are much healthier than canned vegetables.

Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that if people cut only 1/2 teaspoon of salt per day, it could help reduce the number of new cases of heart disease per year by up to 120,000.

Also, the potassium found in foods such as sweet potatoes, spinach, bananas, oranges, low-fat milk, and halibut helps to counterbalance the pressure-increasing effects of sodium by allowing the body to rid itself of excess sodium.

Disclaimer: This article is originally being published by me here on this platform.

wellness
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About the Creator

Richard Appiah

I am a blogger and digital marketing expert. I love animals, reading, writing, and a big fan of soccer.

I also write for MEDIUM

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