One of the biggest problems with high blood pressure is that you can feel just fine when your numbers are high, so you may not sense any urgency to make changes. Unfortunately, millions of people felt the same way — until they had a heart attack or stroke.
Hypertension, which affects nearly half of American adults, is known as a “silent killer” and is one of the biggest risk factors for heart disease. It’s also a condition that’s well within your power to change.
To help, the team here at Upper East Side Cardiology, led by cardiologist Dr. Satjit Bhusri, wants to focus on preventive cardiology and steps you can take to lower your blood pressure, as well as your risks for life-changing heart disease.
When a condition has a nickname like Silent Killer, it’s important to find ways to give it a voice. This starts with becoming familiar with your blood pressure numbers. When you come to our office, one of the first things we do is take your blood pressure reading.
These occasional readings are important and allow us to spot trends, but we also want you to track your blood pressure at home. Whether you get yourself a blood pressure monitor or you check it frequently at your local pharmacy, it’s important for you to get a handle on your numbers so you can set goals.
As for exact numbers, we can sit down with you to go over end goals in terms of more specific numbers.
A key way to lower blood pressure numbers is to move around more. The CDC recommends at least 150 minutes of aerobic exercise each week, as well as two strength-training sessions.
Since we live in New York City, there’s ample opportunity to move around. You can skip the bus or subway and walk 20-30 blocks, or more. Or, you can hit your neighborhood park for an evening stroll each night. Our point here is that you don’t need a track or a treadmill to get your physical activity in, (although those work, too) and any movement helps boost your heart health.
There’s no shortage of stress these days, which can place your body into a fight-or-flight mode that includes a higher heart rate. So, it’s important to find ways to de-stress and lower your blood pressure.
The physical activity we mention above is a great step in that direction, as well as:
Maybe you can even treat yourself to an occasional massage to release physical tension.
When you have too much salt in your diet, it can make your cardiovascular system work harder. So, if you have high blood pressure, one of the first things we recommend is lowering your salt intake, which extends beyond removing the salt shaker from the table.
Sodium is found in many processed food,s so get good at reading labels and avoid processed foods that are high in sodium. For guidance, try to keep your daily intake of sodium under 1,500 mg per day.
When you have high blood pressure, it’s more important than ever to get a solid 7-9 hours of restorative sleep each night.
When you hit REM sleep, your heart rate slows and your blood pressure lowers, giving your cardiovascular system a much-needed timeout.
We don’t always get the chance to reverse the course of our health, but we can with hypertension. So, it’s a good idea to follow these practices if you want to prevent more serious health issues down the road.
If you want a more customized plan for lowering your blood pressure, please contact our New York City office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to set up an appointment. You can also call (212) 752-3464.
