Being Aware Of Your Blood Pressure Could Literally Save Your Life

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Friday, September 19th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed

High blood pressure, which is also known as hypertension, has been given the nickname of the ’silent killer’. High blood pressure can be a fatal condition that develops gradually over a long period of time and the majority of people do not experience any signs or symptoms of the condition at all. As a consequence of its lack of signs and symptoms, high blood pressure frequently goes undiagnosed and untreated.

In the United States it was estimated that approximately 50 million adults suffered from hypertension in the early 1990’s. This figure has been on the rise ever since. By the beginning of the 21st century, it was estimated that about 65 million people had high blood pressure and today that number has topped 72 million. This figure means that approximately one out of every three adults in the US now suffers from high blood pressure.

Here is what some studies have revealed:

30% of people with high blood pressure are not aware of their condition and are therefore not receiving any treatment.

15% of the people are aware that they have hypertension but are either not getting treatment for it or do not bother to follow their recommended treatment.

25% of the people know that they have hypertension but do not presently have their blood pressure under control.

All of this means that about only 30% of the people with hypertension are currently receiving the correct treatment for their hypertension and have it under control.

Although it is often said that it is not possible to tell if a person has high blood pressure there are a few tell-tale signs which may indicate that you have hypertension. Some of these signs and symptoms include headaches, dizziness, blurred vision and nausea.

High blood pressure is one of the major causes of death in the US today and it greatly raises the risk of several life threatening conditions such as cardiovascular disease, heart failure, heart attack and kidney failure.

Bearing in mind the nature of this condition it is only sensible to monitor things by regularly checking your blood pressure and this can be done by calling on your doctor to ask for a blood pressure check. But this is not always convenient for many people and so an alternative is to simply check your own pressure at home. There are now many blood pressure monitors available which are designed for use at home and they are both simple and quick to use and are also quite inexpensive.

Making use of your own blood pressure monitor at home allows you to keep an eye on the blood pressure of the whole family and will give you a great deal of peace of mind and ensure that you detect any developing problems early on so that they can be treated easily.

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