Alternative medicine

Alpha-linolenic acid is the one of the alternative medicine for hypertension. Although diet and exercise are the best tactics to lower your blood pressure, some supplements also may help decrease it. These include:

• Blond psyllium
• Calcium
• Cocoa
• Cod-liver oil
• Coenzyme Q10
• Omega-3 fatty acids
• Garlic

While it's best to include these supplements in your diet as foods, you can also take supplement pills or capsules. Talk to your doctor before adding any of these supplements to your blood pressure treatment. Some supplements can interact with medications, causing harmful side effects, such as an increased bleeding risk that could be fatal.

You can also practice relaxation techniques, such as yoga or deep breathing, to help you relax and reduce your stress level. These practices can temporarily reduce your blood pressure. May this video help you to measure the blood pressure by yourself.

How to Manage Hypertension?

Lifestyle modifications 

The first line of treatment for hypertension is identical to the recommended preventative lifestyle changes and includes, dietary changes, physical exercise and weight loss. These have all been shown to significantly reduce blood pressure in people with hypertension. If hypertension is high enough to justify immediate use of medications, lifestyle changes are still recommended in conjunction with medication.

Medications 

Several classes of medications, collectively referred to as antihypertensive drugs are currently available for treating hypertension. Prescription should take into account the person's cardiovascular risk as well as blood pressure readings, in order to gain a more accurate picture of the person's cardiovascular profile. Evidence in those with mild hypertension and no other health problems does not support a reduction in the risk of death or rate of health complications from medication treatment.

Lose extra pounds and watch your waistline 

Blood pressure often increases as weight increases. Losing just 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) can help reduce your blood pressure. In general, the more weight you lose, the lower your blood pressure. Besides shedding pounds, you should also keep an eye on your waistline. Carrying too much weight around your waist can put you at greater risk of high blood pressure.

Eat a healthy diet 

Eating a diet that is rich in whole grains, fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy products and skimps on saturated fat and cholesterol can lower your blood pressure by up to 14 mm Hg. This eating plan is known as the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet.

It isn't easy to change your eating habits, but with these tips, you can adopt a healthy diet:

Reduce sodium in your diet 

Even a small reduction in the sodium in your diet can reduce blood pressure by 2 to 8 mm Hg. The recommendations for reducing sodium are 2,300 milligrams (mg) a day or less. A lower sodium level — 1,500 mg a day or less is appropriate for people 51 years of age or older and individuals of any age who are African-American or who have high blood pressure, diabetes or chronic kidney disease.

To decrease sodium in your diet, consider these tips:

Limit the amount of alcohol you drink 

Alcohol can be both good and bad for your health. In small amounts, it can potentially lower your blood pressure by 2 to 4 mm Hg. But that protective effect is lost if you drink too much alcohol. Also, if you don't normally drink alcohol, you shouldn't start drinking as a way to lower your blood pressure. There's more potential harm than benefit to drinking alcohol. If you drink more than moderate amounts of it, alcohol can actually raise blood pressure by several points. Track your drinking patterns. Along with your food diary, keep an alcohol diary to track your true drinking patterns. 

Exercise As Your Friend

Let do an exercise to reduce the hypertension. I am sure that this video bring a lot of benefit to us. Let start from now doing an exercises. SAY NO TO HYPERTENSION!!

#LOVE YOUR HEART, KNOW YOUR NUMBERS#

What are the effects?

Hypertension is one of the chief causes of a disease of the arteries called atherosclerosis, where a build-up of fatty deposits called plaques occurs in the lining of the artery walls which can thicken, calcify and narrow the arteries to the point where they restrict the flow of blood. This can result in a blood clot, called a thrombus; forming at the site of the plaque, which may block the artery altogether and cause the tissues normally supplied by the artery to die from lack of oxygen.

This can happen in other organs in the body, but most commonly occurs in the heart, brain, the arteries of the limbs, the kidneys and the retina.

Renal Disease

The renal vasculature shows changes with hypertension.

• "Benign" nephrosclerosis:
  Modest elevations in blood pressure over the years result in thickening of small renal arteries and   arterioles, known as hyaline arteriolosclerosis. This vascular disease leads to formation of small cortical scars, with reduction in renal size.
• "Malignant" nephrosclerosis:
  In a small number of persons with previously mild hypertension or as the initial event, there is a marked rise in blood pressure. Diastolic pressure may exceed 120 to 150 mmHg. The changes seen in arterioles may include:
• Fibrinoid necrosis
• Necrotizing arteriolitis
• Hyperplastic arteriolosclerosis

Heart Disease

The pressure load placed on the left ventricle results in left ventricular hypertrophy. The heart enlarges and dilates, with hypertrophy more marked than dilation, until the left heart begins to fail, particularly when the heart reaches 500 gm in size. Congestive heart failure and cardiac arrhythmias may result from the failing heart.

CNS Disease

The effect of hypertension on small arteries and arterioles in the brain is to cause thickening and loss of resilience. This hypertensive hyalinization may produce occlusion with resultant small lacunar infarcts, or "lacunes" that appear most commonly in the region of the basal ganglia, internal capsule, thalamus, basis pontis, and hemispheric white matter. This arteriolar sclerosis also results in in vessels that are more prone to rupture. The most common site for rupture is the region of the basal ganglia. The hypertensive hemorrhage that results from rupture is one of the causes for a "stroke".

How to prevent the Hypertension?

Much of the disease burden of high blood pressure is experienced by people who are not labeled as hypertensive. Consequently population strategies are required to reduce the consequences of high blood pressure and reduce the need for antihypertensive drug therapy. Lifestyle changes are recommended to lower blood pressure, before starting drug therapy.

Effective lifestyle modification may lower blood pressure as much an individual anti-hypertensive drug. Combinations of two or more lifestyle modifications can achieve even better results. Modern Hypertension Society proposed the following lifestyle changes for the primary prevention of hypertension:

Maintain normal body weight. 

A substantial body of evidence from observational studies documents that body weight is directly associated with blood pressure and that excess body fat predisposes to increased blood pressure and hypertension. In a meta analysis of available studies, the mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure reductions associated with an average weight loss of 5.1 kg were 4.4 and 3.6 mmHg, respectively. In a further subgroup analysis, blood pressure reductions were similar for non-hypertensive and hypertensive individuals, but were greater in those who lost more weight.

BMI (body mass index) is a reliable indicator of total body fat, which is related to a person's body fat based on his or her height and weight. The score is valid for both men and women, but it may overestimate body fat in athletes and others who have a muscular build. It may also underestimate body fat in older people and others who have lost muscle mass. By using BMI formula you can easily measure your current status.

Burn your calories and practice physical exercise.

Lack of physical fitness is a strong predictor of cardiovascular mortality independent of blood pressure and other risk factors. A recent analysis of randomized controlled trials concluded that dynamic aerobic endurance training reduces resting systolic and diastolic blood pressures by 3.0/2.4 mmHg, and daytime ambulatory blood pressure by 3.3/3.5 mmHg. The reduction in resting blood pressure was more pronounced in the hypertensive group (26.9/24.9 mmHg) than in the nor-motensive one (21.9/21.6 mmHg). Even moderate levels of exercise lowered blood pressure, and this type of training also reduced body weight, body fat and waist circumference, and increased insulin sensitivity and HDL-cholesterol levels.

Reduce screen time.

One reason people get less exercise these days is because of an increase in "screen time" the amount of time spent watching TV, looking at the computer, or playing video games. Limit recreational screen time to less than 2 hours per day. If you're with friends at the mall, you're getting more exercise than if you're IMing them from your room.

Say no to smoking.

Smoking causes an acute increase in blood pressure and heart rate, persisting for more than 15 minutes after smoking one cigarette. The mechanism is likely to be a stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system at central level and at nerve endings, which is responsible for an increase in plasma catecholamines parallel to the blood pressure increase. Paradoxically, several epidemiological studies have found that blood pressure levels among cigarette smokers were the same as, or lower than, those in non-smokers. However, studies using ambulatory blood pressure monitoring have shown that both untreated hypertensive and normotensive smokers present higher daily blood pressure values than non-smokers, the increase being particularly pronounced in heavy smokers.

Increase in fruit and vegetable intake.

Fruits and vegetable are about more than just vitamins and minerals. They're also packed with fiber, which means they fill you up. And when you fill up on fruits and vegetable, you're less likely to overeat when it comes to high-calorie foods like chips or cookies.

Don't skip breakfast.

Breakfast kick-starts your metabolism, burning calories from the get-go and giving you energy to do more during the day. People who skip breakfast often feel so hungry that they eat more later on. So they get more calories than they would have if they ate breakfast. In fact, people who skip breakfast tend to have higher BMIs than people who eat breakfast.

 

What are the symptoms?

Hypertension is rarely followed by any symptoms, and its identification is typically through screening or when seeking health care for a dissociated problem. A proportion of people with high blood pressure describe headaches especially at the back of the head as well as dizziness, buzzing or hissing in the ears, vertigo, altered vision or fainting episodes.These symptoms of hypertension however are more likely to be related to

associated anxiety than the high blood pressure itself.

On physical examination, hypertension may be suspected on the basis of the presence of hypertensive retinopathy detected by examination of the optic funds found in the back of the eye using ophthalmoscopy. Classically the severity of the hypertensive retinopathy changes grades from grade I–IV, although the milder types may be difficult to distinguish from each other. Ophthalmoscopy findings may also give some indication as to how long a person has been hypertensive.

 Secondary Hypertension 

Some additional symptoms may suggest secondary hypertension, i.e. hypertension due to an identifiable cause such as kidney diseases or endocrine diseases. Thyroid disease and acromegaly can also cause hypertension and have characteristic symptoms and signs. An abdominal bruit may be an indicator of renal artery stenosis, while decreasing blood pressure in the lower extremities and/or delayed or absent femoral arterial pulses may indicate aortic coarctation. Labile or paroxysmal hypertension accompanied by headache, palpitations, pallor, and perspiration should prompt suspicions of pheochromocytoma. A proportion of resistant hypertension appears to be the result of chronic high activity of the autonomic nervous system. This concept is known as "neurogenic hypertension".

 Hypertensive Crisis 

Severely elevated blood pressure is referred to as a "hypertensive crisis", which confer a high risk of complications. People with high blood pressure may have no symptoms, but are more likely to report headaches and dizziness than the general population. Other symptoms accompanying a hypertensive crisis may include visual deterioration or breathlessness due to heart failure or a general feeling of malaise due to renal failure. This may include hypertensive encephalopathy, caused by brain swelling and dysfunction, and characterized by headaches and an altered level of consciousness.Chest pain may indicate and which may create heart muscle damage or a sometimes aortic dissection, the tearing of the inner wall of the aorta. Rapid deterioration of kidney function (acute kidney injury) and microangiopathic hemolytic anemia (destruction of blood cells) may also occur. In these situations, rapid reduction of the blood pressure is mandated to stop ongoing organ damage.

 In Pregnancy 

Hypertension occurs in approximately 10% of pregnancies. Most women with hypertension in pregnancy have pre-existing primary hypertension, but high blood pressure in pregnancy may be the first sign of pre-eclampsia, a serious condition of the second half of pregnancy and puerperium. Pre-eclampsia is characterized by increased blood pressure and the presence of protein in the urine. It occurs in about 5% of pregnancies and is responsible for approximately 16% of all maternal deaths globally. When symptoms of pre-eclampsia occur the most common are headache, vomiting, epigastric pain, visual disturbance often flashing lights and edema. Pre-eclampsia can occasionally progress to a life-threatening condition called eclampsia, which is a hypertensive emergency and has several serious complications including cerebral edema, vision loss, renal failure, seizures or convulsions, disseminated intravascular coagulation and pulmonary edema.

 In Infants and Children 

Failure to thrive, irritability, seizures, lack of energy and difficulty breathing can be associated with hypertension in neonates and young infants. In older infants and children hypertension can cause unexplained irritability, headache, failure to thrive, fatigue, facial paralysis, nosebleeds and blurred vision.

What are the causes of Hypertension?

Primary hypertension

Primary hypertension is the basic anatomy of hypertension or high blood pressure, responsible for approximately 90% of all cases of hypertension. Inward nearly all modern societies, blood pressure rise up with aging and the risk of becoming hypertensive in later life is considerable. 

Life-style factors that bring down blood pressure include reduced dietetic salt intake, increased consumption of fruits and low fat products, exercise, weight loss and reduced alcohol consumption. Stress seems to play a bit part with particular relaxation methods not abided by the evidence. The conceivable role of additional genes such as caffeine consumption, and vitamin D inadequacy are less clear cut. Insulin resistance, which is common in obesity and is an element of  the metabolic syndrome, is also believed to lead to hypertension. Modern studies also concern the consequences in early life as risk elements for adult primary hypertension for low birth weight or maternal smoking or lack of breast feeding, although the mechanisms associating these exposures to adult hypertension remain obscure.

Secondary hypertension

Secondary hypertension consequences by a recognizable cause. Renal disease is the most common secondary cause of hypertension. Hypertension can also be caused by endocrine disciplines, such as Cushing's syndrome, hyperaldosteronism or Conn's syndrome, acromegaly, hyperthyroidism, hyperparathyroidism and pheochromocytoma. Additional causes of secondary hypertension admit obesity, pregnancy, sleep apnea, immoderate licorice consumption, coarctation of the aorta, and certain prescription medicines, herbal remedies and illegal drugs.