James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

While plenty of health conditions make you painfully aware of their presence via any number of impossible-to-ignore symptoms, high blood pressure (a.k.a. hypertension) can be a sneakier beast. You can literally walk around all day, every day, without a clue that your blood pressure numbers are higher than they should be—many people don’t have physical symptoms that they can feel. Although people who have high blood pressure (which is nearly half of adults in the US) might not have any discomfort from it most of the time, it’s really serious. High blood pressure significantly ups your risk of heart attack and stroke, makes you more likely to develop kidney disease, and can even mess with your sex drive.

​Rampant as high blood pressure is, getting it under control can be a tricky business. Kathryn Harris, MD, a cardiology fellow and the fellows representative for the Association of Black Cardiologists, tells SELF that more than half of people treated for high BP don’t have it under control, meaning that it stays high despite treatment like medication. While the ideal reading is less than 120/80 mmHg (the top number is your systolic pressure and the bottom number is your diastolic pressure), BP that lingers above 140/90 mmHg typically requires both medication and lifestyle changes to rein it in, according to the American Heart Association (AHA).

If you’re one of the many people struggling to keep the beast of high blood pressure on a leash, let us make one thing crystal clear: Significantly lowering blood pressure is tough—and often requires taking medication (in many cases, more than one) and making some pretty serious changes to your lifestyle. It’s complicated stuff, and can take some trial and error.

Finding the right balance of medications and switching up your behaviors around food, exercise, and other key parts of the way you live your life can feel challenging for even those who can afford any prescriptions they need, shop at the health food store, and try out the latest fitness studio in town. And yet, many of the people with the greatest risk of high BP and its downstream effects live with limited access to heart-healthy food or medication that’s within their budgets, Estelle Darlyse Jean, MD, a board-certified non-invasive cardiologist with MedStar Heart & Vascular Institute, tells SELF.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________