that is a “problem” for you, though not necessarily one requiring drugs.
.....So why have things changed so much over the last few years?
.....To answer that, we should first discuss what blood pressure is and how we gauge it. Quite simply, blood pressure measures the force your heart requires to push life-sustaining oxygen and nutrients through your arteries to your tissues.
.....You need pressure to push the blood and oxygen around. The trouble is that “excessive” pressure injures your arteries, leading to the potential problems linked to chronically high blood pressure such as strokes (number one with a bullet), heart attacks, kidney damage, dementia, eye problems, even ED (I’m sure most men sat up and noted that last one even if they ignored the others).
.....Doctors measure blood pressure by tying a cuff around your arm while asking you to relax and chatting endlessly about nonsense you really don’t want to hear, and then tightening that cuff to shut the artery in your arm. They slowly release the pressure in the cuff and listen for a sound to appear, which signifies the upper or systolic pressure. When that sound muffles or disappears, that’s the lower or diastolic pressure.
.....For centuries, we’ve said that everyone was safe so long as their blood pressure reading was below that magic universal of 140/90. Moreover, when the levels went up, we worried much more about the diastolic level than the systolic level. We also used to refer to blood pressure readings hovering around 140/90 (even as high as 160/100) as “borderline”, and most people, especially midlifers, with borderline pressures were not treated with medication but were simply encouraged to monitor their pressure regularly.
.....But much of that is now “old hat.”
First, the systolic level is now considered to be more important than the diastolic level in accounting for complications from high blood pressure.
.....Second, we now know that seniors should try to control their blood pressures nearly as well as younger people.
.....And third, it’s now also clear that midlife is a crucial time of life to control blood pressure because your blood pressure at age 50 is incredibly important in determining your eventual risk of strokes and brain damage when you hit your senior years.
.....What that means, then, is that if you’re middle-aged (and the older I get, the more I stretch the definition of middle-age, although overall, I’d say it’s from 40-60) and if you have abnormal cholesterol levels and you’re overweight and you don’t do any exercise except stroll to the fridge for more beer (I promised not to use my friends as examples, but hey! It’s just too hard not to), |
|
WHERE PEOPLE COME
FIRST