How to beat hypertension?

Sleep deprivation can cause Hypertension.


A recent study in the journal Hypertension, reports that women who are sleep deprived have a greater risk than men of developing hypertension. 


As I remember my mother slept only three to five hours a day. It was in her younger years she always told me she did not have a good sleep last night. I just thought maybe she's thinking too much, but she told me she's not. And one thing I knew if she's watching TV she got into sleep but when I turned it off she will be awake.  Now she's already in her eighties but still that sleeping habit become ordinary to her. And now as I going to have research about this condition i truly found out.....that.


Women who slept less than five hours per night were twice as likely to have high blood pressure compared to those who slept seven or more hours. Besides high blood pressure, sleep deprivation increased risk for diabetes and obesity.  It is not clear from this study why exactly sleep deprivation causes high blood pressure and the other diseases mentioned. Possible answers include the tendency to eat more junk food if one is too exhausted to prepare healthier meals. The resulting obesity can lead to both diabetes and hypertension. Finally, one cannot exclude the role of increased stress from sleep deprivation in illness.


To do this: Pre-sleep activities such as exercise, large meals, and arguments, and adventure movies/books should be avoided for several hours prior to bed. Additionally, the bed is for two major activities: sleep and (guess the other one). Everything else, including eating, watching TV, reading, arguing, etc. should occur outside the bed. If you can't fall asleep, don't toss and turn. Instead, get out of bed, read a book or listen to some relaxing music and then return to bed once tired. 


Your heart and the veins, arteries, and capillaries in your body have enough work to do when you're lean. Don't make matters worse by adding a beer belly, which requires more blood supply, putting additional strain on the heart and raising overall blood pressure. It's infrequent that people are rail thin yet have high blood pressure. By bringing your weight into line with what it should be, you can produce a 10 to 29-point drop in blood pressure.


To do this: Eat meat. In a recent Australian study, people with high blood pressure who replaced 8 percent of their daily calories from bread, cereal, potatoes, or pasta with lean red meat experienced a four-point drop in their systolic blood pressure in just 8 weeks. Arginine, an amino acid in red meat, may help dilate blood vessels, lowering blood pressure. Plus, limiting starches lowers blood sugar and makes your body more efficient at burning fat. Eat a low-fat diet. Removing fat from your diet are key to lowering blood pressure.


You can achieve up to a 10-point drop in blood pressure from regular aerobic exercise. A solid workout raises your blood pressure, which gives your body practice in bringing it back down. Well-trained blood vessels expand and contract easily, which helps control blood pressure, even during times of heightened or prolonged stress. 


To do this: Simply squeeze a rubber ball. It seems to help—a lot, actually. According to a study in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, people performing hand grip exercises for 8 weeks lowered their systolic blood pressure by 15 points and their diastolic pressure by five. The blood-pressure response to grip training is greater than to aerobic exercise. All it takes is 2 minutes of squeezing, four times a day. 


Once you exceed two alcoholic beverages a day, you begin to incur complications, such as an increased risk of high blood pressure. No one is quite sure why an excessive amount of alcohol, which dilates blood vessels, can sometimes raise blood pressure, but it does. In fact, Harvard researchers recently analyzed the drinking habits of 11,000 men with high blood pressure and determined that those who consumed two drinks a day were 30 percent less likely to have a heart attack than those who drank less. 


To do this: Make it a Bloody Mary. According to a study in the American Heart Journal, the antioxidant lycopene in tomato juice can boost your beverage's blood-pressure-lowering power. When participants in the study swallowed tomato-juice extract for 8 weeks, they experienced a 10-point drop in their systolic BP and a four-point fall in their diastolic measure. Add a stalk of celery for extra protection. High in fiber, celery has been used for centuries in Asian medicine to drop blood pressure. 


Shed your outer layers. Nurses and doctors don't always ask you to take off your shirt before measuring your blood pressure, but wearing a sweatshirt or bulky sweater could lead to an artificially raised reading. Thick sleeves boosted systolic pressure measurements by as much as 22 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) in men with high blood pressure . Dress shirts and thin sweaters are fine that measurements taken over bare skin were the same as those taken through sleeves less than 2 mm thick. 

Elevate your arm to heart level. The blood-pressure guidelines set forth by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute are based on measurements taken from people holding their arms at heart level. Most doctors and nurses slap the cuff on your arm when it's resting on a desk or chair, which can raise both diastolic and systolic pressure by six to nine points.


Sit for 16.  Patients who sat for 16 minutes before having their blood pressure checked received more accurate readings than those who sat for less time. When you stand or move around, your blood vessels constrict, and the longer you sit, the more time they have to return to normal size, lowering blood pressure. 

Hit the men's room. Holding back your bladder can artificially raise your blood-pressure reading by making your nervous system think you're stressed. 

Avoid finger cuffs. All our experts panned finger cuffs. The closer to your trunk, the more accurate monitors become. Finger cuffs are also susceptible to shifts in body temperature and finger position.