simon_wat asked:
I have high blood pressure, people told me that the diastole is more important that the systolic.
I want to know what causes high diastole. I do not want medical terms, I want to know in patient perspective.
What am I going to do to keep it low?
I have high blood pressure, people told me that the diastole is more important that the systolic.
I want to know what causes high diastole. I do not want medical terms, I want to know in patient perspective.
What am I going to do to keep it low?
Here’s a good article explaining HBP:
High blood pressure can be caused by genetic factors, age, stress, being overweight, diet, and low activity level.
Usually changing your eating habits and exercising daily will help lower your blood pressure. Switching to sea salt instead of sodium chloride can help some, too.
A normal systolic pressure should not exceed 140, and a normal diastolic pressure is no more than 90. An increase in both pressures can mean disaster.
In recent studies, persons below 65 or 70 who are diagnosed with hypertension reported increase incidents of diastolic high blood pressure. This higher rate of diastolic pressure causes adverse effects on the brain, heart and kidney. Patients of diastolic high blood pressure are advised to lower diastolic pressure by maintaining below 90. Systolic pressure is also required to be lowered though a top priority is focused on diastolic pressure.
Causes of diastolic high blood pressure include aging of the heart and its natural effects. When a person grows old his heart muscles get weary and eventually stiffen making it harder for the heart to fill in blood appropriately. Diastolic high blood pressure, if not treated well, may lead to diastolic heart failure. Diagnosis of diastolic high blood pressure may risk the patient of diseases and illnesses like CAD or coronary heart disease, aortic stenosis, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and other pericardial diseases.
Aside from aging, poor lifestyle like smoking and drinking, high cholesterol levels, obesity, high salt consumption, prior cardiac surgery, viral infection, family history and diabetes are also leading contributors to the occurrence of diastolic high blood pressure.
Blood pressure is the pressure (force per unit area) exerted by circulating blood on the walls of blood vessels. Blood pressure readings are represented as one figure over another – the top figure being called the systolic reading (that measures blood pressure when your heart contracts) while the bottom figure being called the diastolic (that measures the pressure when your heart relaxes) and are measured in millimeter of mercury (mmHg).
When your heart contracts, it pushes a large volume of blood forward to your arteries.
The arteries should expand to accept this high blood volume. However if plaque is deposited on the blood vessel, this will cause these arteries to be rigid and thus restricts its expansion when the heart contracts causing your blood pressure to rise higher then normal. The less flexible your arteries are the higher your blood pressure rises. As the deposits progress the arteries become narrow and increases the blood pressure even more. This increase will be evident in both the systolic and diastolic reading of your blood pressure.
There seem to be some controversy regarding whither systolic or diastolic, is more important in determining your susceptibility to heart attack and stroke. In 2003, the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure (JNC) published a new classification of blood pressure for adults that states unequivocally that in people over 50, a systolic reading of more than 140 mm Hg is a much more significant factor in cardiovascular disease than the diastolic reading.
The Framingham Heart Study showed that systolic blood pressure alone correctly identified 91% of those who needed treatment, while high diastolic pressure identified only 22% of individuals needing treatment.
On the other hand others still hold on to believing that the diastolic reading is more important possibly because they are able to tell based on the reading if a person is prehypertensive or hypertensive. Also precisely which type of hypertension a person is suffering from can be determine from the diastolic reading – accelerated malignant hypertension, being at serious risk of succumbing to a stroke or heart attack; benign hypertension, blood pressure remain at one high level for extended period of time; labile hypertension , diastolic pressure constantly fluctuate between 80 and 100mmHg.
While this controversy continues of which is more important, there is one very important point to note: both readings usually rise with high blood pressure and falls with low blood pressure, and are both measurement of pressure of the blood against the arteries, except one is while the heart is at rest while the other is at the highest pint of contraction of the heart.
Depending on the height of your blood pressure, you might need to maintain medication. In addition a high fiber, high anti-oxidant diet is very important to reduce oxidative action of free radicals and remove excess cholesterol and toxins from your system. It follows then that you will need to ensure that your diet consist of mainly vegetables (60% of vegetables of which 50% is eaten raw) and fruits (20% fresh raw fruits). Also include nuts and seeds as part of your 10% protein. While 10% of your diet should be of starchy carbohydrates, it should be noted that if most of this is of naturally grown foods such as yams, potatoes, green bananas etc., it would be more beneficial.
While there are those discouraging from the use of salt (sodium chloride) it should be noted that
1). It is impossible to avoid sodium and
2). Sodium is very important in the diet of human for the regulation of water balance among other fundamental functions. Sodium chloride should be consumed in moderation.
The consumption of water is also very important. You should be consuming between 8 and 10 glasses of water each day. Allium foods such as garlic, chive, scallion and leek are very important in your diet since they tend reduce the viscosity of the blood.