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High Blood Pressure, what is it?
Apparently there is an alarming trend in the rate of High Blood Pressure or Hypertension depending on how you want to view it. After a decline over the past three decades, apparently it is on the increase.
In the United States of America they reckon that there are a staggering 50 million plus people over the age of six who are sufferers of High Blood Pressure.
High Blood Pressure is an insidious disease. The reason for this is that it actually has very little in the way of outward symptoms or warning signs. A shocking fact is that 30 percent of the people who sufferer from it don’t actually realise that they suffer from it.
If left untreated, over the years, High Blood Pressure quietly goes about its business and damages virtually every organ in the body and actually places you in more overall danger than virtually any other condition around.
High Blood Pressure is the most important factor behind Stroke, the third most deadly illness in the Western World. Heart Disease, another one of the complications due to High Blood Pressures is the largest killer, claiming over 500,000 deaths each year in the United States alone.
If left untreated, High Blood Pressure can shorten your life by up to 20 years earning it the rather dubious name, “The Silent Killer”.
It is absolutely essential to identify and diagnose High Blood Pressure as soon as is possible. In fact such is the desire to ensure that as few people suffer from High Blood Pressure that the threshold for High Blood Pressure i.e. the level at which it was deemed safe to have Blood Pressure, has now been lowered so that we now have a condition known as “Pre High Blood Pressure”. The goal is to try and catch those whose Blood Pressure levels were once deemed to be at the high end of being normal and stop them from becoming sufferers of High Blood Pressure.
The other part of this treatment is to make sure that changes in lifestyle are effected as early as possible so as to have as much effect as possible.
The danger point starts with much lower levels of Blood Pressure than was once believed. Using a base point now of 115/75 mm Hg, it is now believed that with a 20 point increase of the upper figure ( the systolic pressure) or an increase of around 10 points in the lower level (the diastolic pressure) your risk of dying from a Stroke or Heart Attack Doubles.
If you know what to look for High Blood Pressure can be detected and measured very easily. Sometimes all it takes to lower the Blood Pressure levels are lifestyle changes whilst in certain other cases, Medication is required.
Nowadays, with the information at our disposal, there is certainly no reason why High Blood Pressure should be the Death Sentence it once was.
The bottom line is that we all probably know someone who either has High Blood Pressure already but we also all know someone who not only has High Blood Pressure but has yet to be diagnosed with it.
About the Author: Stephen Morgan is the principle Editor for Living with High Blood Pressure and more details about the above article can be found at
http://www.livingwithhighbloodpressure.net/features/high_blood_pressure_what_is_it.html
.and also has just launched the associate site
High Blood Pressure.
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