So why do some people get hypertension, and what can we
do to treat it and prevent it beyond medication?
Well, if we look at the causation factors, there are
lots of risk factors that cause hypertension.
For some patients, it is genetic.
And if a patient develops high blood pressure under the age
of 40, it's important to make sure that they don't have some
other condition underlying it that may require treatment.
Close relatives, such as having a brother or a parent
with high blood pressure, does increase your risk.
But for most people, it's not genetics, but lifestyle that
makes the difference.
There are lots of factors, and we'll go through a few of them
shortly, including not enough exercise, eating a diet that's
high in salt or saturated fat, smoking, drinking alcohol, and
physical and emotional stress.
People's socioeconomic status can actually impact on the
likelihood of developing hypertension.
If you're unemployed or scared of being unemployed or worried
about money, that emotional stress can increase your blood
pressure, just like the stress of running away
from a hairy spider.
Also, people are more likely to get high blood pressure
when they age.
Now, we shouldn't consider this a normal part of healthy
ageing, but certainly, the risk factors we're going to
talk about, like smoking, or obesity, or poor diet, will
get worse as you get older.
Let's go through some of these risks one by one and talk
about how they affect blood pressure and what you can do
to reduce your risk.
The first risk we're going to talk about is salt.
Salt intake in your diet increases blood pressure, and
there's clear evidence that the more salt we eat, the
higher our blood pressure gets.
The World Health Organisation recommends keeping your daily
salt intake less than five grammes a day.
That equals one teaspoon of salt.
That's not very much.
If you're eating a diet that's mainly fresh, unprocessed
food, five grammes is actually very easy.
But if you ever stop to look at what's on the back of
labels, you'll find that most processed foods, and
particularly takeaway foods, are very high in salt.
From some companies, a slice of pizza or a hamburger can
actually have your entire day's salt
intake in it, or more.
So beyond just your salt intake, the quality of your
diet has a significant impact on your likelihood of
developing blood pressure, and is one of the other things we
can modify to treat blood pressure.
Having a diet that's high in quality fruit and vegetables--
five to seven or more servings of fruit and
vegetables a day--
not only decreases the space you have left to eat processed
or fast foods that are high in salt, but also, it contains
all sorts of vitamins and minerals that will prevent
your risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
It also decreases your weight, and we'll talk about
weight later on.
The other thing to think about is fish oil.
Omega 3 fish oils have very strong evidence that they
prevent heart disease.
Now, you can either take a fish oil supplement or
increase your dietary intake of oily fish--
things like sardines, mackerel, herrings, anchovies
are all very beneficial for preventing heart disease in
the long term.
Smoking and alcohol have a significant impact on blood
pressure as well.
Patients who drink alcohol are likely to have a higher blood
pressure, but particularly, patients
who binge drink alcohol.
Drinking more than six or eight drinks in a session will
significantly increase your risk of high blood pressure.
The World Health Organisation recommends that people should
keep their alcoholic drinks below two drinks a day if
you're a man and one drink a day if you're a woman, and
have at least two or three days a week where you don't
drink alcohol at all.
Smoking is a little different in that there is no safe limit
for cigarette smoking.
One cigarette will raise your blood pressure for 15 to 30
minutes afterwards for one cigarette.
People who smoke, obviously, on a regular basis have high
blood pressure, and are far more
likely to suffer problems.
So stopping smoking and reducing alcohol is one of the
most significant things you can do for your
health in so many ways.
The other risk factor is weight.
So increasing weight increases blood pressure.
It's quite interesting that there is a direct correlation
between weight loss and blood pressure.
The more weight you lose, the more your blood
pressure comes down.
But even small amounts of weight loss if you're
overweight will make a difference.
So if people are significantly overweight and feel that it's
too hard, 5 kilos of weight loss will reduce your blood
pressure significantly.
10 kilos of weight loss can bring your blood pressure down
to the same amount as a medication would do.
And for some people, that's quite an achievable goal.
Even beyond losing weight, physical activity decreases
your blood pressure.
So people who do aerobic activity like walking every
day have a lower blood pressure even if their weight
stays the same.
So moving off to the lounge is one of the best things that
you can also do.
This may seem tough, but all of these activities and all of
these lifestyle changes are quite achievable.
With the support of your friends and family, with
advice from your doctor and other health professionals,
and with your own motivation, you can actually do this.
Do you remember Beth wanted to know at the beginning of the
module what it was that she could do beyond just taking
medication to improve her health?
Have a look at her medical records in the resource file
and see what it is that you think she can do.
Do you think there's changes she can make?
Hop on the discussion forum and have a chat with your
classmates about what you would tell Beth, if you were
her friends.
It might also be worth having a look at your lifestyle.
What could you do to your lifestyle to decrease your
risk of developing high blood pressure in the future?
Also, in the Resource tab, you'll notice there's a link
to a document by the World Health Organisation which is a
global document about hypertension.
If you're interested in finding out more, it's really
interesting.
It talks a lot about how different countries have
difficulties with high blood pressure, but it also talks
about what people can do at an individual level, but also
what we can do at a global level to decrease the risk of
this disease.
So now we've covered blood pressure.
What are we going to do in the next module?
We've got a new patient for you to meet called Steven,
who's having trouble with heartburn and reflux.
And we're going to be looking at a different body system and
some more mechanisms through that system to explain how
that works.
So Kylie and I have got a lot more in store, and we look
forward to seeing you in module two.