I came across a phrase the other day whilst doing some research on some articles about high blood pressure and the phrase was “high blood pressure symptom in man”.
Now the phrase might be a slightly awkward phrase whilst looking at it from an English-language perspective and would certainly not be one of the search terms that I would definitely use but the key thing that really came to mind here in my mind was that it highlights how possibly confused and poorly served we are when it comes to trying to understand the various symptoms that we think might be indicative of high blood pressure.
Now writing as somebody who himself was diagnosed by accident with what is termed as “malignant hypertension” just over five years ago; I can well understand this paranoia in trying to spot symptoms at an earlier stage as is possible but the truth of the matter is that in the majority of cases this is just not possible.
Now to slightly backtrack here, let me be slightly more explicit as to what exactly malignant hypertension is. Now in the various stages or levels of hypertension, malignant hypertension is the worst. Now this is a sobering thought believe me and one that does tend to concentrate the mind slightly but fear not it isn't as bad nowadays as it was 40 years.
Forty years ago if you were given a diagnosis of malignant hypertension then by and large your doctor may just as well have given you a death sentence. Given the fact that as far as most people are concerned the ideal level for blood pressure or hypertension is what they call 120/80 then if your blood pressure readings exceed 200/130 then you can understand why there is this panic when the doctors encounter a patient with a reading this high.
In my case the reading was in the region of 216/160 so you can understand that at this point there were alarm bells ringing all over the place when the doctors got round to dealing with me.
As I mentioned earlier, forty odd years ago if you were diagnosed with a level of hypertension this high then there was very little the doctors could do about it but thankfully in today's medical climate and with today's research there is an awful lot they can do when they encounter a level of blood pressure this high.
Now medication will only take you so far and there comes a point when will power and the desire to live takes over and you force yourself into some fairly major lifestyle changes. As my cardiologist said to me five years ago you have a simple choice to make in that you had better start making some lifestyle changes soon or you will have to accept the fact that you will be taking some fairly strong medication for the rest of your life.
Now given the fact that I'm a firm believer in that if you spend a fair amount of time ingesting foreign chemicals into your body then you are going to have to accept the fact that sooner or later there are going to be some fairly serious reactions to this and some fairly hefty side effects, then you can understand why I am now a firm believer in lifestyle changes.
Nothing was changed overnight and in fact some lifestyle changes took longer to implement than was ideal but at least five years later I can safely say that at no other time during my six monthly checkups over the last 18 months has my blood pressure reading ever been greater than 120/80.
So go on make that lifestyle change it doesn't have to be major, start small and build up but at least start somewhere.
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