By: Mujuthaba
Hypertension or ‘ley macchah dhiun’ is a very common disease, which affects almost a billion people worldwide. A blood pressure (BP) reading of 140/90mmHg is the marking point of hypertension. Hypertension is blamed for leaving life-threatening conditions and/or diseases in its path, such as heart attacks (myocardial infarction), strokes, kidney failure, vascular complications (peripheral vascular diseases) and vision impairment (retinopathy).
Hypertension maybe caused by single or multiple factors. Fifty percent prevalence of the disease is in sedentary individuals. Other factors that contribute are excessive smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol (HDL) and excessive salt intake.
Hypertension can be controlled and reduced by altering current lifestyle. Follow these guidelines to achieve it:
- If obese, try to maintain a normal body weight. Losing 10kg results in 5-20mmHg reduction in hypertensive BP.
- Restrict Sodium (ie. salt, soya sauce…etc) intake. This increases blood volume, putting extra pressure on the blood vessels. Low sodium diet reduces hypertensive BP by 2-8mmHg.
- Manage the diet. Consume fruits, vegetables and low fat dairy products with reduced contents of saturated fat (or animal fat). This decreases hypertensive BP by 8-14mmHg.
- Engage in moderate physical activity (such as walking), most days during the week for 30 minutes. This reduces the hypertensive BP by 4-9mmHg.
Exercise should not be undertaken if the resting BP is greater than 200/110. An exercise/exercise testing should be terminated if BP reading is greater than 220/105. Aerobic type exercises are preferred over resistance training, as lifting weights may cause Valsalva maneuver (forced holding of breath), which would increase the BP by folds. Recommendation for exercise is 3-7 days a week for a minimum of 30 minutes and a maximum of 60 minutes. The exercise intensity should remain between 40-70% of maximum exercise capability (VO2max) of the person.
Hypertension is avoidable and it takes determination. I hope this article helps to relieve the hypertensive lifestyle.
3 comments:
thats interesting, but just one question buddy what is your theory on inter muscular fat in relation to body composition. thank you.
I’ll try an answer that very briefly. Body composition is the difference in fat and fat-free mass…yeah? Excess fat store in the body (over-weight/obese) is associated with chronic diseases, can’t turn away from that; whether it is excess fat in the muscles (intramuscular) or surrounding them (intermuscular as in the question). Both types of fat distributions are related to insulin resistance in the muscles (type-2 diabetes), although the former is known to be more prevalent in causing chronic diseases. But if I have to go on with a theory of my own, I’m not a fan of losing fat that doesn’t need to be lost. I hope u r satisfied with the answer, do read this article How And Where Fat Is Stored Predicts Disease Risk Better Than Weight, maybe helpful. Thanks.
This works!: Dash Diet
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