8 blood pressure SAY IT OUT LOUD - SENIOR AND PROUD!
Surprising things that can raise your By Rachel Nania for AARP
WHY IS HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE DANGEROUS? High blood pressure — also known as hypertension and called the “silent killer” because it often comes with no symptoms — can wreak havoc on the body, causing damage to the blood vessels, heart, brain, kidneys, eyes and more. If left undetected or uncontrolled it can lead to: Heart attack Stroke Heart failure Kidney disease Vision loss Sexual dysfunction Angina Peripheral arterydisease It’s estimated that nearly half of U.S. adults have high blood pressure; only about 1 in 4 adults with hypertension have it under control. Source: American Heart Association, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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eople who watch their blood pressure are generally familiar with the more common factors that can cause their numbers to spike — salt and stress, for example. But a handful of unsuspected foods, habits and health issues can play a role, too, and sabotage well-intentioned efforts to lower high blood pressure, or hypertension, a condition that affects nearly half of U.S. adults. Here are eight surprising things that can send your numbers soaring.
1. SLEEP APNEA Sleep apnea, a sleep disorder in which a person stops and restarts breathing several times throughout the night, can cause a bump in blood pressure. And it’s becoming increasingly common in the U.S. as more Americans struggle with being overweight, says Donald Lloyd-Jones, M.D., president of the American Heart Association and chair of the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Excess weight is one of the foremost risk factors for developing sleep apnea; age is another big one. When a person with sleep apnea stops breathing, the brain steps in and wakes the body up to take a breath; this can happen up to 30 times
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an hour. “And when we don’t get good quality sleep — and particularly if we’re not getting good quality sleep because our airway gets closed and our brain and our body have to maintain enough awareness to try to open up the airway — that is very, very hard on the vascular system,” Lloyd-Jones says. All the stress and strain drives up blood pressure — “and not just when we’re asleep, but also when we’re awake for the rest of the day,” Lloyd-Jones says. It can cause a whole host of other health issues, too, including an increased risk for heart attack, type 2 diabetes and liver problems. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine found that severe sleep apnea in middle or old age can increase risk of premature death by up to 46 percent. A common warning sign of sleep apnea is snoring, so if someone tells you that you snore loudly or gasp often during sleep, it may warrant a discussion with your health care provider. A number of devices and therapies can
help to treat sleep apnea, and studies suggest that treatment with one of the more common options — a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine — may even improve blood pressure numbers.
2. AIR POLLUTION Research reveals that exposure to both “fine particulate matter” air pollution (what you’d find from car exhaust and fuel burning, for example) and coarse particulate matter air pollution (like dust from roads and construction sites) can boost blood pressure in adults. The link has also been established in children. One study led by researchers at the University of Michigan found that even short-term exposure to high levels of air pollution can
