Bob Held asked:


As a first step, let’s talk about your heart.

Your heart is an organ that is mostly muscle tissue. It is a pump. In very simple terms its job is to receive incoming blood from the body that is low in oxygen and pump it to the lungs.

As it passes through the lungs the blood gets rid of carbon dioxide and picks up oxygen. Then the blood goes back to the heart and the heart pumps the oxygen rich blood out to the entire body.

Blood flows through arteries going out from the heart to various parts of the body, and through veins on the way back to the heart.

The heart pumps blood by the rhythmic contraction of the four chambers in the heart. It is the strong contractions of the lower two chambers (called ventricles) that pumps the blood out of and away from the heart to the various parts of the body.

There is a great deal of pressure created by the contraction of the ventricles. and it is this pressure that pushes the blood through the miles of arteries within the body.

It is the pressure, the force of the blood pushing against the inside walls of your arteries, that is being discussed when we talk about blood “pressure.”

What do the numbers mean?

You’ve probably heard the sound of a heart beating at some time. It sounds sort of like: lub-DUB, lub-DUB, lub-DUB, lub-DUB.

The “lub” is the sound of the auricles beating and pumping the blood into the bigger, more powerful chambers, the ventricles. The “DUB” is the sound of the ventricles beating, and pumping the blood away from the heart (see the above illustration).

When the powerful ventricles contract (the “DUB”), that is the moment of greatest pressure called the “systolic pressure.”

Between one “lub-DUB” and the next “lub-DUB” is a moment when the heart is not beating at all, that is the moment of lowest pressure called the “diastolic pressure.”

When doctors or nurses measure your blood pressure, they usually give it to you as two numbers, the “systolic” over the “diastolic” or the high over the low measurements.

These numbers fall into certain ranges:

What controls blood pressure?

Blood pressure is controlled by tiny muscles that line the inside of your blood vessels.

These muscles allow your arteries to operate like soft rubber tubes, that expand with each beat of your heart.

When these muscles throughout the vascular system [the arteries and veins that carry blood] expand, blood pressure drops.

When these muscles throughout the vascular system tense up, blood pressure rises.

When these muscles get tense, the arteries become narrower, more rigid, less flexible, and the heart has to beat harder to keep the blood flowing through these narrower tubes.

If the muscles that line your arteries are tense all the time, the blood pressure will remain high. This is called hypertension!

Continuous high blood pressure puts extra strain, wear and tear on your heart and arteries, that can eventually lead to heart attacks and strokes.

What Causes High Blood Pressure?

What is it that makes the muscles that line your blood vessels tense all the time? What are the things that can actually drive your blood pressure up?

* Poor diet

* Nutritional deficiencies

* Being overweight

* Alcohol and caffeine in excess

* Emotional and physical stress

* Being diabetic

Each of the above can cause the loss of vital minerals from the body. These minerals are essential to the natural and effective control of blood pressure.

“Magnesium is essential for cells to maintain proper balances of other minerals such as potassium, sodium, and calcium.”

“When cells are deficient in magnesium, this balance is disrupted, and cells lose potassium and are flooded with calcium and sodium.”

“In the smooth muscle cells of the blood vessels, this sets the stage for constriction and elevation of blood pressure.”

excerpted from The Magnesium Solution

by Jay S. Cohen, M.D.

Not having enough magnesium is one of the main causes of high blood pressure.

“As many as half of us in the United States are magnesium deficient.”

“Our soils are becoming depleted of magnesium, which eliminates the natural opportunity to receive magnesium from fruits, vegetables, and water.”

excerpted from The Sinatra Solution

by Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.

Blood Pressure Drugs

Today, most people with high blood pressure are only treating the symptoms and not getting to the root of the problem.

Furthermore, many hypertension medications given to people with high blood pressure are adding to the problem instead of getting to the root cause.

All blood pressure medications are man-made chemicals. They are alien substances in your body.

They attempt to directly address the high blood pressure (which is a symptom) rather than what is causing the high blood pressure.

Some of these medications will do this by slowing your heart beat, others by interfering with nerve impulses to your arteries, and still others by removing water from your body, or blocking biochemical reactions, or preventing calcium from entering the cells that make up the walls of your arteries.

All blood pressure medications have side effects. Some of these side effects are so strong that they negatively impact your quality of life.

Often, two or three of these drugs are prescribed to be used at the same time, which creates even more side effects as a result of the chemical interactions between the drugs.



Michael

OceanBlue0910 asked:


I have been taking hypertension prescriptions for over 5 years. My Blood pressure is normal. How can I control my blood pressure with out taking prescription drugs?

Lynn

tinax3 asked:


For my final science project, I am taking the blood pressure of 6 students, three males, and three females. I hope to conclude whether the students blood pressure is higher in the morning before school, or after school in the afternoon.
My only issue is, that I have to tell how it applies to science. Does anyone have any idea of how blood pressure would apply to science?

Alfred

rollotomasiii asked:


Is there a general rule for how antihistamines – as a class of molecules – affect blood pressure? Or is their no such generalization for either the affect they have on blood pressure or for all antihistamines in general, that is, maybe certain ones affect blood pressure differently. If their is such a rule, what is it and how does this occur, biochemically speaking?

Laurie

loraleerees asked:


What happens inside your body if high blood pressure is not controlled?

You’ve probably heard that high blood pressure can contribute to heart disease, stroke and kidney failure. You may understand the risk better if you can visualize what’s going on inside your body.

Simply put, when your blood pressure is high, your heart has to work harder than normal, which puts both the heart and the arteries under a greater strain.

Your heart

If you work hard lifting weights, your arm muscles will enlarge. In the same way, when the heart has to work harder for an extended time, it tends to enlarge. When your blood pressure is too high, your heart has to work progressively harder to pump enough blood and oxygen to your body’s organs and tissues to meet their needs. The heart muscle stretches and thickens, and the heart stops functioning properly. A significantly enlarged heart has a hard time meeting the demands put on it and can fail.

Your arteries

Arteries are the vessels, which carry blood throughout your body. When your blood pressure is too high, the arteries become scarred, hardened and less elastic. This occurs to some degree in all of us as we age, but elevated blood pressure speeds this process, which is called ‘hardening of the arteries’ or atherosclerosis.

Hardened or narrowed arteries may be unable to supply the amount of blood the body’s organs need. If the organs don’t get enough oxygen and nutrients, they can’t function properly. There is also a risk that a blood clot may lodge in an artery narrowed by atherosclerosis, depriving part of the body of its normal blood supply.

If the arteries that supply blood to the heart become clogged, blood flow to parts of the heart is slowed. When one vessel is completely closed off, blood ceases to flow to part of the heart, and portions of the heart muscle are damaged. This is a heart attack.

Narrowing of the arteries may also cause chest pain, called angina pectoris. Narrowing of the arteries in the legs causes cramping and pain because the tissues are not getting enough oxygen.





Your brain

Stroke may be caused by the progressive narrowing of the blood vessels in the brain. When blood flow becomes inadequate, brain cells are robbed of oxygen, and they die. Narrowing of the vessels also leads to a situation where a blood clot cannot move through the arteries; it blocks the flow of blood and deprives the tissue beyond of oxygen. About 80% of strokes are caused by the blockage of an artery in the neck or brain.

People who suffer a stroke often are left with paralysis on one side of the body and loss of speech.

A stroke is an emergency just as is a heart attack. Its symptoms are:

Weakness, numbness or paralysis of the face, arm or leg – particularly on one side of the body

Difficulty speaking or understanding simple statements

Blurred or decreased vision in one or both eyes

Sudden, unexplainable and intense headache

Dizziness, loss of balance or loss of coordination, especially when combined with another symptom

Sudden nausea, fever and vomiting – distinguished from a viral illness by the speed of onset (minutes or hours vs. several days)

Brief loss of consciousness or period of decreased consciousness (fainting, confusion, convulsions or coma).



Your kidneys

High blood pressure can cause narrowing of the arteries in the kidneys – just as in other parts of your body – which can lead to kidney failure.

The primary function of the kidneys is to filter toxic chemicals from your blood. This process is accomplished in specialized structures inside the kidneys. The blood pressure of the vessels inside these filtering structures is critical for their proper functioning.

When the arteries are narrowed and thickened by high blood pressure, blood flow to the filtering structures is reduced, and they cease to function properly. The amount of fluid that the kidneys can filter is reduced, leading to kidney failure. Toxic materials build up in the body. People with kidney failure need to undergo dialysis – use of a machine as an artificial kidney – and may ultimately need a kidney transplant.

The kidney has its own feedback mechanism to maintain optimum blood pressure to assure its proper functioning. When this internal mechanism senses that blood pressure is too low, it tries to compensate by raising blood pressure, which begins a deadly spiral of higher and higher pressure.

Your eyes

As in other parts of your body, the blood vessels inside your eyes may also narrow and harden due to uncontrolled high blood pressure. This can cause clot formation and bleeding inside the eye, which leads to vision impairment and even blindness.

If you are really and truly ready to live without

Hypertension, go to http://www.ALISTROL.com

You want to feel better and live a happy and healthy life.

We want that for you, too.

Please note that we are not advocating that people stop using their normal medication, but would like to make you aware that some alternative therapies can be very effective to help treat problems and create a healthier, younger and more vital you. For more information on ALISTROL, please click here http://www.ALISTROL.com

ALISTROL HEALTH

200 West Kellogg Road

Bellingham, Washington 98226

U.S.A.



Lucille

alistol asked:


High Blood pressure is known to be the silent killer by the medical practitioners as; it risks life without any warning. Without any serious symptoms and major complications it attacks the human body. Being unrecognized for years it brings severe perils like heart attack, kidney failure and stroke. Beware, silent is not gold in all the cases.

Technically, high blood pressure can be defined as the increased pressure of blood in the wall of the arteries. When arteries carry the blood pumped by the heart, blood flows with a resisting force towards the arteries. Hypertension or high blood pressure is the product of the flow of blood times the resistance in the blood vessels.

Facts about High Blood Pressure

• Uncontrolled blood pressure is the key to deaths, causing from heart failure and other heart diseases.

• The disease remains unrecognized for years as it has no proper symptoms or signs.

• Only way to detect the disease is measuring the blood pressure. Normal blood pressure is less than 120/80 mmHg and a blood pressure of 140/90 or above is considered high.

• Not only stressed and tensed but also a normal healthy person can have high blood pressure.

• Person having a family history of hypertension or high blood pressure is more vulnerable to the disease.

• There is a myth about high blood pressure that it is not a disease but it is and as risky as any other severe disease.

• Smoking heavily, stressed lifestyle, obesity, high cholesterol diet and excessive use of stimulants are the master keys to the high blood pressure.

• High blood pressure is a factor in 67 percent of heart attacks all over the world.

• The key to prevent high blood pressure is a disciplined and healthy lifestyle.

Reasons behind the High Blood Pressure

What actually causes high blood pressure? Still a difficult question to answer as there are no certain reasons defined. Some of the most common reasons observed are chain smoking, heavy consumption of alcohol, mental stress, obesity etc. In some cases genetic factors, consumption of contraceptive pills, pain relievers, thyroid disease, diabetes, and kidney problem are present in the roots of developing high blood pressure.

Signs or Symptoms

No proper symptom but a lot of complications coming to the body is the most striking fact about the high blood pressure. The only way to detect high blood pressure is to

measure the blood pressure. Some most common symptoms are-

? Nervousness

? Fatigue and weakness

? Restlessness

? Insomnia

? Nose bleeding

? Emotional instability

? Dizziness

Treatment and Diagnosis

Doctors diagnose the high blood pressure by measuring the blood pressure and to keep it in control with proper medicines. They have to find out the reason responsible in a particular case for the high blood pressure. Their ultimate goal is to reduce systolic pressure of less than 140mmHg. Blood pressure is monitored regularly at specific time intervals until it is under control or to the normal level. Compounds used for the treatment are ACE inhibitors, Angiotensin-II receptor antagonists, Beta-blockers, Alpha-blockers, Calcium-channel blockers etc.

Reduce your chances of getting High Blood Pressure

Living a healthy lifestyle is your mantra to prevent high blood pressure. To minimize your chances of getting high blood pressure it is necessary to take some initial measures. Some key points are as follows:

? Reduce smoking as it is the most severe factor for high blood pressure.

? Intake of fiber rich diet can reduce the risks.

? Exercise regularly keeps your blood circulation regular.

? Avoid alcohol consumption as much as possible.

? Try to intake only medically prescript high-blood-pressure medicines.

? Try to use some herbal blood pressure reducing supplements which do not have any side effects.



Eddie