High Blood Pressure (Hypertension)

Prevention

To prevent high blood pressure, you should:

• Get regular aerobic exercise

• Limit your intake of salt and alcoholic beverages

• Eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low in saturated fats

• Avoid smoking

• Maintain a desirable body weight.

It is important to try to modify all the risk factors for coronary artery disease that are under your control. In addition to the above actions, you should:

• Quit smoking

• Reduce your high LDL cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol).

There is the real possibility that you can cure your high blood pressure just with lifestyle changes, and won't require blood pressure medicines.

Treatment

Doctors and people with high blood pressure usually prefer to control it with lifestyle changes, but sometimes medication is needed to provide adequate control. Antihypertensive medications include diuretics, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, calcium channel blockers and alpha-blockers. Doctors tend to be more aggressive in using medications in people with diabetes, kidney disease or heart problems, because these people are at extra risk of developing problems from high blood pressure.