Live Long. Live Well. Make Certain You’re Blood Pressure is Normal in 2016.

• January 18, 2016
• AAI Rejuvenation Clinic Blog

An Important New Year message from your Friends at AAI Rejuvenation Clinic

We here at AAI are committed to keeping our clients in perfected states of good health. Anti-Aging and Longevity starts with the very simplest basics, which we often forget, like making certain our blood pressure is normal, to very slightly below normal. Why? Because high blood pressure has no warning signs, you feel normal.
HOWEVER:

• High blood pressure is a “silent killer” because it usually has no warning signs, yet it can lead to life-threatening conditions like heart attack or stroke.
• 1 out of 3 people have high blood pressure!!
• The good news is that high blood pressure, or hypertension, can often be prevented or treated. It is imperative to be diagnosed as early as possible.

We live in an age where many folks do not even have a primary doctor. Please let me say that is a very big mistake. Some of us, me included forget to take our Blood Pressure medicine or skip days… That is truly playing with fire. The facts speak loudly:

• Every 3 months our blood pressure is subject to change.

We must stay on top of this health factor, as it is so consequential to a long, healthy fruitful life.

Normal blood flow delivers nutrients and oxygen to all parts of your body, including important organs like:

• Heart
• Brain
• Kidneys

Your heart helps to push blood through your massive network of blood vessels, large and small. Your blood vessels, in turn, constantly adjust. They become narrower or wider in response to how much volume of blood is pumped out with each beat of your heart. We call this blood stroke volume.

• If your arteries are starting to get stiff and a little brittle with middle age it can be because at mid-age we lose some of the all-important and vital elastin in our arteries.
• We have collagen to make the arteries and veins strong and elastin to make them expand properly.

It’s normal for your blood pressure to go up and down throughout each day. Blood pressure is affected by:

• Time of day
• Exercise
• The foods you eat
• Stress
• and other factors such as heredity.

Problems can arise, though, if your blood pressure stays too high for too long.

• High blood pressure can make your heart work too hard and lose strength.
• The high force of blood flow can damage your blood vessels, making them weak, stiff, or narrower.
• Over time, hypertension can harm several important organs, including:
  – heart
  – kidneys
  – brain
  – eyes

Hypertension is a leading risk factor for death and disability worldwide, according to Dr. Paul Whelton, an expert in hypertension and kidney disease at Tulane University. “High blood pressure raises the risk of having a heart attack, heart failure, stroke, or kidney disease.”

• Putting on extra weight or having a family history of high blood pressure also raises your risk for hypertension. You must take meaningful action.
• The number one thing that you can do is to lose weight and get daily exercise.

Eat fewer fats and simple sugars….you want healthy fats like omega 3 high density lipids from high quality fish oil. We can help with that with our lab, which quite literally only has the highest quality nutraceutical supplements.

Because it usually has no symptoms, the only way to know for sure that you have hypertension is to have a blood pressure test at least once a month. This easy, painless test involves placing an inflated cuff with a pressure gauge around your upper arm to squeeze the blood vessels. A health care provider may then use a stethoscope to listen to your pulse as air is released from the cuff, or an automatic device may measure the pressure.

Blood pressure is given as 2 numbers.

• The first number represents the pressure in your blood vessels as the heart beats (systolic pressure).
• The second is the pressure as your heart relaxes and fills with blood (diastolic pressure).

Experts generally agree that the safest blood pressure—or “normal” blood pressure—is 120/80 or lower, meaning systolic blood pressure is 120 or less and diastolic pressure is 80 or less. I like to keep mine at 114/70 because that is still very safe and puts much less pressure against the artery walls.

High blood pressure is defined as having an average blood pressure of above 140/90 according to the National Institute of Health’s Dr. Lawrence Fine. He oversees research on the treatment and prevention of hypertension. Since blood pressure can vary widely from day to day, a diagnosis of hypertension is usually based on an average of 2 or more readings taken on 2 or more occasions.

When diet and exercise fails, there are now medications that do not have the terrible side effects that so many people complain about. Remember we talked about the arteries needing elastin at youthful levels in order to have healthy arteries able to stretch without bursting? The prescription Enalapril comes from a group called Ace Inhibitors and scientists have found a very remarkable aspect to Ace Inhibitors.

• Ace inhibitors can cause the artery walls to make elastin and become more youthful in a healthy ability to stretch and as they are able to stretch out more safely, blood pressure goes down with very few, if any, side effects.
• Ace inhibitors also make the kidneys, heart and brain healthier, according to cardiologist Dr. Luis Tami.

So folks, this New Year please make certain your blood pressure is normal and if it’s not please call your doctor right away. If you are one of our patients, call your assigned Wellness Advisor at AAI ASAP.

Blood Pressure