High blood pressure – also known as hypertension. How does one gets diagnosed with hypertension? It is actually a measure of the force of blood pushing against the blood vessel walls. It simply means that the heart is working extra hard to pump and circulate the blood around the body. This is especially dangerous, and it contributes to the hardening of the arteries that may lead to heart failure when this is not managed properly.
In Singapore, an ever growing trend of situation of people aged 30-69 having hypertension is ever rising. Sources has shown that 25% of Singapore residents aged 30-69 have hypertension and people ages 60-69 years have almost up to 50%.
Having personally interacted to over thousands of people here in Singapore, this staggering amount of people and the age group found with hypertension is true and here’s the 5 big factors contributing to it.
Diet
With the evolution of food, more foods are pre packed and sold at the cost of convenience, people are spoiled with lots of choices of highly processed foods like hamburgers, canned foods, highly processed sugary bottled drinks.
Packet ‘Healthy’ drinks are not that healthy anymore with highly processed chemical introduced in it.
Green vegetables are sprayed with chemicals to withstand the long transport time when being shipped to us and being consumed by people like me and you with no knowledge of it at all.
Obesity
Being overweight or obese may lead to increased pressure of the blood vessels’ circulation because the body’s tissue requires more supply of oxygen and nutrients. As a result blood pressure increases while they circulate around the artery walls.
Family History
If this runs in your family, then you need to really watch what you eat and maintain a good eating habit. Heredity plays a part of the risk of having hypertension. It might not happen in the early stages of your life however it might be possible when you reach a certain age.
Kidney Failure
The main function of kidney is in charge of removing the wastes and extra fluid from the body. Having kidney failure leads to the waste and extra fluids to accumulate, causing a build-up in blood vessels and, in turn, the blood pressure level will increase.
Diabetes
Diabetes and hypertension are closely related because diabetes is caused by the thinning happens when the arteries are damaged and that makes them targets for hardening which is also called atherosclerosis. That can cause high blood pressure. When not treated, it can lead to big trouble including blood vessel damage, heart attack, and kidney failure.
How To Prevent All These From Happening?
Yes. If you don’t already have them, the answer to the solution is Eating Right! The food you consume heavily affects our body and that in turn affects the level of health.
Because we all want convenience. The food manufacturers are smart enough to utilize that and making foods that are highly processed and highly chemicalized.
Start by learning how to find and eat the right food, get yourself educated in knowing what’s real vs fake food and stop falling for marketing gimmicks of ‘sugarless’ drinks or ‘organic’ once and for all.
