Hypertension Treatment
Lifestyle Management And Medical Treatment Of Hypertension
Now that you’ve been diagnosed with hypertension what’s
next? How do you control the disease and manage the symptoms so that you
aren’t at risk for secondary diseases because of the hypertension? This
answer depends on what your risk factors are and whether or not you can
control your hypertension with lifestyle changes or if your doctor feels
you need to take medications along with the lifestyle changes.
The risk factors for hypertension fall into 3 categories:
1) Those you can change: Exposure to environmental pollutants, obesity,
lack of exercise, excessive alcohol use, some prescription medications
and illegal drugs, diets high in sodium and frequent stress.
2) Those
you can control: Congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease,
diabetes, kidney disease/failure and pregnancy.
3) And those you can
do nothing about: Family history, age, male gender, Afro-American and
certain nervous system disorders.
Lifestyle changes include
losing weight, increasing your activity level, avoiding environmental
pollutants such as second hand smoke, avoiding overuse of narcotics
and/or alcohol, and watching the amount of sodium, fat and cholesterol
in your diet. This also means keeping other diseases and stressful
situations under control. If you have any of the conditions listed above
in number 2, you should be under the guidance of a doctor who is
monitoring your blood pressure on a frequent basis.
If you
already have hypertension or lifestyle changes just didn’t help you
reduce your blood pressure, your doctor may decide to put you on
medications. Medications may include diuretics (helps decrease the
amount of fluids in the body by increasing urine output), beta-blockers
(helps to prevent vaso-constriction due to central nervous system
responses), calcium channel blockers (relaxes the blood vessels),
angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors (also prevents
vaso-constriction), angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), or alpha
blockers. Medications such as hydralazine, minoxidil, diazoxide, or
nitroprusside may be required if the blood pressure is very high, these
medications help dilate the blood vessels allowing greater blood flow..