Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is one of the most common chronic diseases and the leading cause of stroke worldwide. It’s estimated that high blood pressure affects over 29% of adults in the United States, and the numbers are expected to continue growing.
Often referred to as the “silent killer,” high blood pressure frequently goes undetected because any obvious, significant physical symptoms do not typically accompany it.
Many people with high blood pressure can continue their usual daily activities without knowing that their heart and blood vessels are in danger.
Physical symptoms are often mistaken for something other than high blood pressure. Or the onset of symptoms occurs so slowly that significant changes aren’t wholly recognized as abnormal.
To ensure that you aren’t one of the unknowing 29%, stay well informed. This article will help you understand the numbers behind blood pressure and what could be causing your high blood pressure.
We will also determine ways to protect yourself from high blood pressure and the best blood pressure support supplements you can take every day to help maintain healthy blood pressure.
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What Is Considered High Blood Pressure?
A ratio of two numbers measures blood pressure, diastolic pressure, and systolic pressure. If either or both of these numbers are high, you know you need to lower your blood pressure.
The first number (or upper number) is called the systolic blood pressure. This is the amount of pressure on your arteries when your heartbeats.
The second number (or lower number) is called the diastolic pressure. This is the amount of pressure on your arteries between heartbeats.
Normal blood pressure is 120/80 Hg. Anything higher than that brings you to a danger zone. Just nine more Hgs of systolic pressure and you have high blood pressure.
The next three stages are high blood pressure levels. High blood pressure stage 1 and 2 can cause some underlying health problems. If you’re in a hypertension crisis, you need to get to the hospital right away.
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What Causes High Blood Pressure?
Unfortunately, there isn’t one leading cause of high blood pressure that you can hone in on to lower your blood pressure levels.
Over 90% of high blood pressure cases cannot be attributed to any single factor. Multiple issues related to the environment, genes, and habits are known to cause high blood pressure.
You can’t change all these factors, like your age and gender, family history, race, and other pre-existing medical conditions. These can make you more susceptible to high blood pressure.
On the other hand, you have plenty of health care factors within your power to change. These include:
- Sedentary lifestyle - Physical exercise strengthens the circulatory system and boosts heart health. Without this regular activity, your heart can be weak.
- Diet - If your diet is low in antioxidants, fiber, and potassium but high in sodium, you’re at risk.
- Overweight - A higher body weight puts more stress on the heart to circulate blood, causing high blood pressure.
- High stress - High-stress environments can contribute to your blood pressure levels. The stress itself can cause your blood pressure to rise. It can also increase your odds of developing habits that also contribute to high blood pressure, like drinking and eating an unhealthy diet.
- High cholesterol - HBP and high cholesterol levels are often correlated.
- Diabetes - Many people with diabetes in the USA also have HBP.
- Smoking - The regular use of tobacco can damage your arteries, making them more susceptible to high blood pressure.
- Sleep apnea - Resistant hypertension, high blood pressure that is hard to treat, is often caused by obstructive sleep apnea.
- Excess alcohol consumption - Even though scientists cannot determine how drinking alcohol raises your blood pressure, all agree it can cause hypertension in excessive amounts.
How High Blood Pressure Can Interfere with Heart Health
Your heart uses pressure to pump nutrient- and oxygen-rich blood throughout the body. For this process to work effectively, it’s essential to maintain a certain level of pressure at all times.
If the pressure is too high or too low, serious complications arise.
As blood pressure rises, circulating blood presses more forcefully against blood vessels’ walls, causing them to stretch. As the vessels stretch beyond their means, microtears form along with the delicate tissue.
These tiny abrasions trigger an inflammatory response, and hard plaques adhere to the damaged tissue’s surface to form a protective barrier.
As more plaque accumulates, blood vessels narrow and become stiff and brittle, making it more difficult for blood, oxygen, and nutrients to pass through them.
Blood vessel openings will continue to become progressively more narrow, creating more pressure on the system resulting in a cascade of devastating consequences.
Eventually, the narrowed, brittle vessels can rupture or become blocked entirely, limiting blood flow to the heart, brain, and other vital organs. This potentially causes life-threatening events, like a stroke, heart attack, and heart disease.
How to Protect Yourself from High Blood Pressure
Naturally, you will want to take steps to lower blood pressure if you’re aware that your numbers are high. This will not only decrease your risk of dangerous medical conditions, but it will also improve your overall heart health.
According to the American Heart Association, these are the best ways to keep healthy blood pressure levels:
Eat a Healthy Diet
A balanced diet filled with fruits and vegetables will give you healthy fiber, essential vitamins, and antioxidants. You also want to ensure that you drink plenty of water and other non-sugary drinks.
Many doctors advise you to follow the DASH diet. DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. It specifically helps lower blood pressure levels of people with hypertension.
With this well-balanced diet, you eat various fruits, veggies, whole grains, and lean proteins with small servings of healthy fats and dairy. The biggest challenge is monitoring your sodium intake.
The DASH diet teaches you to use various spices and natural herbs to bring flavor to your food instead of salt. Also, look for foods labeled “no salt added” or “low sodium.”
The DASH diet also limits your alcohol consumption to two drinks per day for men and one for women.
Stay Active
When considering your cardiovascular health, you can’t leave out the immense benefits you reap simply by becoming more active. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to join a gym.
You can make a significant improvement in your circulatory health by taking a daily fifteen-minute walk. Over time, you can increase the length of your daily walk.
Manage Your Stress
Moments of high stress raise your blood pressure temporarily. This is due to adrenaline release, which triggers your heart to beat faster and forces a rush of blood throughout the body.
But when you’re stressed long term, you could be causing your blood pressure levels to stay in a heightened state, harming your cardiovascular health.
You can engage in stress-reducing activities, which are different for everyone, to maintain healthy blood pressure levels. There are lots to choose from, but it's essential to find the one that helps you unwind.
You can try natural ways like meditation, yoga, watching funny videos, talking with friends, taking walks, reading books, or taking short naps.
If stress is present in your daily life, you may need to find a way to make adjustments in your schedule to alleviate it. This may include a radical life change, but if your health is at risk, it's worth it.
Improve Your Sleep
Good, regular sleep habits are essential to your heart health. Sleep helps the body regenerate and regulate most of our body’s systems, including the nervous and endocrine systems.
Sleeping at least seven hours a night can help you maintain healthy blood pressure levels by allowing your body to regulate itself sufficiently.
Undergo a sleep test if you have problems sleeping at night. You may be suffering from sleep apnea. Hypertension can be a side effect of sleep apnea.
Limit Your Alcohol Consumption
If alcohol consumption has been a habit for you, and you have high blood pressure, you may want to consider breaking this habit for your heart health.
Binge drinking is especially dangerous for increasing high blood pressure levels. Just 10 grams of alcohol can raise your blood pressure by one point.
Luckily, you can reverse these effects by drastically limiting alcohol consumption in just two to four weeks.
Stop smoking
Smoking is, without a doubt, a significant risk factor for heart attack and stroke. It also causes a buildup of plaque in the arteries, which can cause high blood pressure.
If you’re a smoker, consider quitting to lower high blood pressure or to improve your heart health, at least.
Take a Blood Pressure Support Supplement
If your blood pressure levels are high, your doctor may advise you to take prescription medication to help treat it. There are many different kinds of these blood pressure medications, and each has side effects.
Many people would prefer to take a natural dietary supplement that is FDA approved to help give them healthy blood pressure levels.
It’s hard to distinguish a quality blood pressure support formula since there are so many on the market.
What Is the Best Blood Pressure Support Supplement?
There are several blood pressure support supplements you can find in a healthcare store. Many contain natural herbs and various hypertension supplements.
When shopping for the best dietary supplement to help you reach a normal blood pressure range, check the product information to ensure it contains high-quality ingredients backed by science.
This list below is a few of the best blood support supplement ingredients. We also included a list of ingredients not well supported by science to lower high blood pressure levels.
Nitric Oxide Boosters
Nitric oxides are natural vasodilators that can help to open up the arteries and help your blood flow more efficiently throughout the body.
L-Citrulline
This amino acid helps increase nitric oxide production in the body. When you’re young, your body produces L-citrulline on its own, but your production levels decrease as you age.
L-citrulline is present in foods like watermelon, but supplementing with a product that contains L-citrulline can ensure that you get enough of this nitric oxide booster to provide results.
Daily L-citrulline supplementation of 6 grams or more reduces both systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
L-Arginine
Like L-citrulline, L-arginine is another amino acid that helps the body produce nitric oxide to help relax and widen the arteries. It’s also found in green tea leaves.
L-arginine supplementation was proven to help lower blood pressure in a variety of ways. It boosts nitric oxide levels, lowers oxidative stress, and decreases glycation.
Beetroot Powder
As with any supplementation, essential vitamins and minerals from a natural source will help these compounds’ absorption rate.
Beetroots convert nitrates to nitric oxide in the body. Essentially, the nitrates in beetroots facilitate the dilation of the blood vessels, allowing for improved circulatory health.
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Other Effective Dietary Supplements
Aside from natural vasodilators, there are herbal compounds that act as effective ingredients in the best blood pressure support supplements.
Asian Ginseng Root
Ginseng boasts many health benefits, including many involving cardiovascular health. It’s also known as a blood pressure regulator, helping lower high blood pressure and raising low blood pressure.
Tribulus Terrestris Fruit
Although most people take this supplement as a natural way to improve libido and testosterone, this fruit is also beneficial for your heart.
This plant is an effective antihypertensive supplement that can be taken long term without any side effects.
Subpar Blood Pressure Support Supplements
There are always plenty of natural supplements that cultures worldwide have used for centuries to treat illnesses. Some of these are proven to be scientifically useful, while others are not.
The blood pressure support supplements below may be popular with Amazon customer reviews, but clinical trials have not proven their efficacy.
Hawthorn Berries
There are many studies done on these tiny fruits and their effect on blood pressure the natural way.
Although they’re proven to be high in antioxidants and provide some anti-inflammatory properties, studies on the effects of hawthorn extract and lowering high blood pressure are inconclusive.
Hibiscus Tea
This tea, made with the hibiscus flower, is also called sour tea in Iran. Hibiscus tea provides vitamin C and other antioxidants, but it can have dangerous side effects if you aren’t careful.
Hibiscus tea has shown to have some possible herb-drug interaction, causing diuretic prescription medication’s efficacy to be adversely affected.
Coenzyme-Q10
Studies on Coenzyme-Q10 back its ability to lower high blood pressure. Other reviews on COQ10 nutritional supplements show that studies were biased, and overall efficacy is inconclusive.
Other Supplements
Other supplements may treat high blood pressure but are inconclusively proven to be effective. These include folic acid, garlic extract, fish oils, olive leaf, and juniper berry extract.
Conclusion
If you found that your blood pressure levels are high, there are effective ways to lower these numbers for optimal heart health. Now that you know the causes, you can make lifestyle changes that can lower high blood pressure.
It’s also vital that you regularly check your blood pressure to prevent adverse blood pressure health and the onset of health disease. As the title explains, it is a “silent killer,” and you need to catch it before it’s too late.
Don’t just wait for nature to take its course, however. Give a healthy heart a big boost with one of the best blood pressure supplements on the market, Nitric Oxide Booster.
