How to Lower High Blood Pressure Naturally: Simple Steps Backed by Science
High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is one of the most common medical conditions in the world. It affects millions of adults, often without obvious symptoms. Many people don’t even know they have it until they develop serious health problems like heart disease, kidney damage, or stroke.
As a nurse and medical doctor, I have seen firsthand how small lifestyle changes can lower blood pressure and prevent complications. This guide explains what causes high blood pressure, signs to watch for, and evidence-based ways to control it naturally.
⭐ What Is High Blood Pressure?
Blood pressure measures how hard your blood pushes against the walls of your arteries. When that pressure stays high over time, it damages your heart, blood vessels, kidneys, and brain.
How does excess pressure damage blood vessels?
The walls of arteries and veins are composed of smooth muscle cells, elastic fibers, endothelium, and adventitia. Chronic pressure on these cells can damage their recoil ability, causing inflammation and fibrosis, thereby forcing higher pressures to be transmitted to the expansion of the vessels with each heartbeat.
How to Fix This Problem?
The tendency to become hypertensive starts during pregnancy when the future person is in utero. In fact, it really starts before conception. You must plan your pregnancy to protect your future baby. Of course, many people don’t know this. So, in this article, I’ll be focusing on the rest of us whose parents didn’t know, and we are here. By the time one is born, the damage has begun to take root, and by the time one is an adult, as seen in most people, it’s already too late to prevent this problem. The only way out at an older age is to manage the high pressures on the vessels.
Because every adult is prone to increased blood pressure due to age and how long the heart has been pumping, you must find a way to lower your chances of getting the disease. The disease is the manifestation of increased vascular pressure. Some people never reach this stage of disease manifestation. However, most people do, and high blood pressure is often incidentally discovered and measured during routine physical exams. High blood pressure is also known as hypertension, is a “silent” killer. This means that one may never know they have the disease because it often has no symptoms, but regardless, the organ damage continues in the body. As I’ve explained above, blood pressure is directly related to the amount of damage to your blood vessels, including the resulting inflammation and scarring. Your goal is to reduce inflammation and the resultant stiffening and scarring so that your vessels can be more elastic and stretch properly with every heartbeat.
Once the stage is set, it’s usually hard to get back to your younger self. You can, however, try to improve the situation by seeing your doctor and getting a prescription that can help keep your blood pressure in check every day. This is unlikely to cure this problem, but it can protect you from the complications of the disease, such as heart attack or stroke, and kidney disease; it just keeps your vessels at as normal a pressure as possible for life, in most cases.
Another thing you can do for self-care is reduce your salt intake, as too much salt increases blood volume, which raises blood pressure. Salt can also trigger reflex spasms in vessels, narrowing the lumen. Eat whole foods to get more vitamins and minerals that support tissue repair, exercise regularly to maintain weight, and improve circulation and respiration.
