Blood Pressure: Understanding the Basics and Managing Hypertension

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Clearhead Tip: There is a relationship between blood pressure and mental wellbeing. When your blood pressure gets high, you're more likely to struggle with anxiety, stress, anger and even depression. It also happens the other way around; if you experience these emotions often, they can increase your blood pressure.

The Science
Shahimi, N. H., Lim, R., Mat, S., Goh, C. H., Tan, M. P., & Lim, E. (2022). Association between mental illness and blood pressure variability: a systematic review. Biomedical engineering online, 21(1), 19. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12938-022-00985-w

What is blood pressure?
Blood pressure is the pressure in your arteries when your heart pumps blood around your body, and the pressure in your arteries when your heart relaxes between heart beats.

Blood pressure changes throughout the day and is affected by things like stress, caffeine, nicotine, exercise, and diet.

Too much fat and cholesterol in the diet can build up in the arteries. This causes the arteries to narrow which makes it harder for the heart to pump blood around the body. This will increase blood pressure. If the artery becomes completely blocked, a heart attack or stroke will occur.

How can I reduce my blood pressure?
High blood pressure is preventable. Maintaining a healthy weight, exercising daily, reducing your saturated fat intake, limiting alcohol and salt, not smoking, and maintaining your stress levels will all contribute towards a healthy blood pressure.

What if I have low blood pressure?
Low blood pressure can be good or bad depending on a person’s health. Low blood pressure can result in someone feeling dizzy or fainting which might be an indication of a medical problem. Low blood pressure could also be caused by certain medications. It is always best to seek medical advice if you are concerned about low blood pressure.

If you typically have low blood pressure and no medical symptoms, this could be a good thing as you will be putting less pressure on your heart (the lower your blood pressure the less hard the heart has to work to pump blood around your body).

What is a healthy blood pressure?
The New Zealand Heart Foundation recommends maintaining a blood pressure of 120/75 mmHg or lower.

The New Zealand’s Ministry of Health’s Cardiovascular Disease Risk Assessment and Management for Primary Care recommends lifestyle interventions for every person who presents with a blood pressure equal to or greater than 130/80 mmHg.

Lifestyle interventions that have a significant effect on lowering blood pressure include:

Reducing salt intake (less than 1800mg daily)
Exercise daily (for example, 30 minutes of walking)
Reduce or limit alcohol intake as follows:
two standard drinks* per day for women and no more than 10 standard drinks per week
Three standard drinks per day for men and no more than 15 standard drinks per week
At least two alcohol-free days per week

^* A standard drink is approximately 330 mL of 4% beer or 100 mL of 12.5% wine

Key Message
Following a predominantly wholefood plant-based diet will help reduce elevated blood pressure by limiting or eliminating animal products (meat and dairy), which can be high in saturated fat and salt, and replacing these with wholegrains & fruit and vegetables.

Maintaining a healthy bodyweight is also key to helping keep blood pressure in check. By following the guidelines in this article, you will give yourself the best chance at maintaining a healthy blood pressure, and reducing your blood pressure if it is high.

The Science

https://www.heartfoundation.org.nz/wellbeing/managing-risk/managing-high-blood-pressure

https://bpac.org.nz/2018/bp.aspx