If you want to improve your health, one of the best ways to do that is to work on your blood pressure. Anyone who knows that their blood pressure is higher than it should be owes it to themselves to take action and bring down those levels as soon as they can.
High blood pressure is something that’s seriously dangerous and can lead to all kinds of serious conditions later in life, such as heart attacks and strokes. In order to avoid those problems later, you need to take action today. If you’re not sure how to lower your blood pressure, you’re in the right place. Find out what you can do below.
Increase Cardiovascular Activity
The best thing you can do for your blood pressure and your fitness, in general, is to get active. Activity is vital and it helps us to keep our waistlines in check, but it’s about much more than body fat. When we engage in cardiovascular activity, we’re able to raise our heart rate and over time, our blood pressure will reach a healthier level. So if you want to get started with bringing your blood pressure down to a lower level, the best place to start is with regular cardiovascular exercise, such as running.
Achieve a Healthy Body Weight
We mentioned body fat above, and although this isn’t the only thing that can raise our blood pressure, it can certainly be a leading contributor to high blood pressure. If you’re overweight, you’ll already know that this isn’t great for your long-term health. And one of the things it’s likely to cause is high blood pressure. So, be losing some weight, however, you want to go about doing that, and reaching a healthier size, you’ll reduce your blood pressure problems.
Eat a Lower-Carb Diet
Changes to your diet will not only help you lose weight but also help, in their own right, to reduce your high blood pressure levels too. Eating a lower-carb diet is certainly one way to do this. Of course, any healthy changes to your diet will be rewarded in terms of improvements to your health. But one method that’s been found to help improve high blood pressure, in particular, is a diet that’s lower in carbohydrates. So if you’re someone with quite a high-carb diet, that’s something you might want to change.
Reduce Your Overall Sodium Intake
Sodium, or salt, is something that’s generally bad for your blood pressure and your health in general. It can and should be consumed as part of a healthy diet, but never in high quantities. People who consume a lot of salt as part of their diet, even if they don’t know that they’re doing it, are much more likely to have high blood pressure. Sodium is often hidden in processed foods, so you might be consuming much more sodium than you even realize, so it’s important to be careful in that regard.
Find Ways to Deal with Stress Better
For many people, it’s not about fat or diet, it’s about stress. When you’re stressed out, it causes your blood pressure to rise. If that’s something that you feel might apply to you, you owe it to yourself to find ways to deal with your stress in healthier ways and, ideally, avoid stressful situations where you can. Those mental strains can have physical manifestations, and the impact on your blood pressure and heart can be disastrous.
Try Meditation
If you’re looking to lead a calmer and more chilled out life going forward, one of the ways in which you can do that is by meditating. This allows you to clear your mind and focus on peace and calmness for a while. Even if you think that meditation sounds silly, you should at least give it a fair go and see how it works for you. You might be surprised by the outcomes.
Consider a Change of Contraception to Reduce Estrogen Exposure
Not everyone realizes that one of the things that can dramatically impact your blood pressure is the contraception you choose. For example, copper IUD solutions are good for preventing those kinds of problems, but other kinds of contraception can raise your blood pressure, so be sure to compare copper IUD vs mirena and any other options. Making this kind of change could be exactly what you need if you’ve been having blood pressure problems and you’re not sure why that might be. It’s all about reducing estrogen below excessive levels because that’s what causes the blood pressure to increase.
Improve Your Sleep Habits
Another thing you can do to help keep your blood pressure in a better and healthier position is to get more sleep. When you’re sleep-deprived and overworked, we tend to see our blood pressure raise. Getting that rest at night is essential for your body, and that need is certainly something that should be taken seriously. So if you know that you don’t always go to sleep at a reasonable time or you struggle to sleep consistently through the night, you should start thinking about how you can change that.
Cut Back on Caffeine
Finally, you should think about what you consume in terms of drinks. Alcohol, when consumed in high volumes, is very bad for your blood pressure. But caffeine can raise it too. When we drink a caffeine-rich coffee, our blood pressure sees a sharp rise. Even though this rise is only temporary, if we’re drinking coffee throughout the day, it means that our blood pressure will be spiking regularly throughout the day, and that’s not what you want to happen. So maybe it’s time to cut back on the coffee or to choose decaffeinated more often.
High blood pressure is known as a silent killer, and that’s a warning you should most definitely take seriously. You shouldn’t ignore this metric and let your health slowly deteriorate. Instead, take action today and improve your blood pressure levels with the help of the methods discussed above.