Treatment of High Blood Pressure

Blood pressure goals are not the same for everyone. Although everyone should strive for blood pressure readings below 140/90, doctors recommend lower readings for people with certain conditions. The goal is 130/80 if you have or have had chronic kidney disease or diabetes.

Changing your lifestyle can go a long way toward controlling high blood pressure. In addition to diet and exercise, your doctor may recommend medication to lower your blood pressure. To reduce the number of doses you need a day, which can reduce side effects, your doctor may prescribe a combination of low-dose medications rather than larger doses of one single drug. In fact, two or more blood pressure drugs often work better than one. Sometimes finding the most effective medication - or combination of drugs - is a matter of trial and error.

Almost one in three American adults are having hypertension

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, an estimated 65 million American adults - nearly one in three - have high blood pressure. But, for more than two-thirds of them, blood pressure remains out of control. High blood pressure leads to more than half of all heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure cases in the United States each year, and it increases the risk of kidney failure and blindness.

Clinical guidelines recommend that physicians work with patients to keep blood pressures below 140/90 mmHg, even lower for people with diabetes or kidney disease, and encourage all their patients to make healthy lifestyle changes, such as losing excess weight, becoming physically active, limiting alcoholic beverages, and following a heart-healthy eating plan, including cutting back on salt and other forms of sodium, and not smoking.

Good Fats versus Bad Fats

Good Fats
Fats that are liquid or soft at room temperature are polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are found primarily in vegetable oils such as palm, corn, safflower, sunflower, flaxseed, and canola oils. Polyunsaturated fats are also the main type of fat found in seafood.

Essential fatty acids, such as linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid, are specific polyunsaturated fatty acids that are needed to maintain cell structure and produce hormones. These are in a sense the "good fats" - essential fatty acids that must be obtained from the foods we eat. The remaining type of fatty acids to be concerned with are monounsaturated fatty acids, found mainly in vegetable oils such as canola, olive and peanut oils.

Bad Fats (Trans Fats)
When food manufacturers add hydrogen to vegetable oil, a process called hydrogenation, trans fats are created. Trans fats extend the shelf life and flavor stability of foods, such as vegetable shortening, crackers, cookies, and snack foods. However, these are the bad fats for the heart.

The American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines state that people should limit trans fats to 1% or less of their total daily calories. By comparison, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines urge Americans simply to keep their intake as low as possible. This means that for someone eating 2,000 calories daily, trans fat intake should be no more than two grams per day.

Half of Americans are at risk for developing a pre-diabetic condition!

Study conducted by the researchers at the National Institutes of Health, USA estimates that up to half of Americans are at risk for developing a pre-diabetic condition that can lead to full-blown type 2 diabetes. They will develop a diabetes precursor known as insulin resistance if current trends are not reversed.

In addition to raising the risk of type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance is one of the key symptoms of "metabolic syndrome," a condition also characterized by obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Researchers also estimated that obesity rates will continue to increase in conjunction with diabetes risk