Beat bad blood pressure with 3 lifestyle changes

October 9, 2015

What you eat — and how much of it — are not the only contributors to high blood pressure, nor is changing them the only way to control it. How you live your life, the way you handle stress and even what supplements you take all have roles to play. Here are three day-to-day habits, routines and reactions that can affect your blood pressure, as well as easy ways to tweak them for better health.

Beat bad blood pressure with 3 lifestyle changes

1. The dangers of smoking

It should come as no surprise that the most vilified bad habit — smoking — has a deleterious effect on your blood pressure. After all, it's pretty bad for everything else connected with your health.

  • While it does not cause high blood pressure, nicotine constricts blood vessels and temporarily raises blood pressure.
  • Smoking also damages arteries, increasing the buildup of plaque and making arteries less flexible. Even chewing tobacco can make it harder to control your blood pressure.
  • Other consumption-oriented habits — including drinking alcohol, being overweight and overindulging in sweets or salty snacks — are also uniformly bad for blood pressure health.

2. How emotions can impact your blood pressure

Your emotions also affect your blood pressure.

  • For instance, studies have found that depressed people have a more difficult time controlling their high blood pressure than those who are not depressed.
  • There are many possible reasons, including the fact that people who are depressed may lose interest in taking their medication and may be less likely to follow the kind of healthy lifestyle necessary to control blood pressure. But researchers suspect there may also be hormonal changes in the brains of people with depression that may affect blood pressure.
  • You don't have to suffer with depression, however. It is eminently treatable with medication and/or therapy.

3. The importance of sleep

How well you sleep also makes a difference when it comes to blood pressure control.

  • When researchers deprived 36 people with mild to moderate hypertension of sleep for one night, then compared their blood pressure levels with those following a good night's sleep, they found that both blood pressure and heart rate levels were higher after the sleepless night than after a good snooze.
  • The results, researchers note, suggest that sleepless nights may represent an increased risk for both organ damage and acute cardiovascular disease.

We could continue, but the point is simple. A healthy, happy lifestyle contributes to healthy blood pressure. Unlike viral infections or allergies, which have clear external triggers and causes that are out of your control, high blood pressure is almost entirely linked to the daily choices you make.

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