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Tag: Hypertension

  • Ten tips for checking your blood pressure at home

    Ten tips for checking your blood pressure at home

    Doctors are increasingly recommending that patients check their blood pressure at home to diagnose high blood pressure (hypertension) and make treatment decisions. Seeing the pattern of your blood pressure at home allows a doctor to make a more informed decision about treatment than a single test at the doctor’s office.

    To ensure appropriate treatment, it’s important that you take appropriate steps when you monitor your blood pressure. Mistakes in your technique at home could misdirect the doctor to prescribe you too much, too little, or the wrong type of medication.

    If you’ve been advised to monitor your blood pressure at home, follow these ten tips to ensure your data is accurate:

    At your doctor’s visit:

    1. Learn your numbers. Ask your doctor what your target blood pressure is. Targets can differ by as much as 20 points, depending on age and medical condition. Ask your doctor how often to check, and what results require an urgent call to the office, or a visit to the emergency room.
    2. Bring your machine to the doctor at least once. The office can check your machine against office measurements. Make sure that your cuff size is correct: a cuff that’s too small will overestimate your pressure and a cuff too large will underestimate it.
    3. Relax. It’s common for your blood pressure at the office to be higher than your results at home. This is called “white coat hypertension,” and is probably a result of the mild anxiety you may feel at the doctor’s office. That’s why doctors often recommend patients check their blood pressure at home. Doctors sometimes recommend further testing with another method, if available, for patients with white coat hypertension; this method is called ambulatory blood pressure monitoring.

    At home:

    1. Plan in advance. No smoking, caffeine or exertion 30 minutes before. Empty your bladder. Rest for 5-10 minutes before you start.
    2. Know the correct body position.
      • Sit upright with your back supported and your feet on the floor. Don’t cross your legs or rest them on an ottoman.
      • Rest your arm at the level of your heart (for example, on pillows, books, or on a table). If your arm is too low—for example, lying in your lap–your results could overestimate your pressure.
    3. Consistently measure either the right or left arm.
    4. Stay still and quiet while the machine runs.
    5. Repeat the cycle once.
    6. If you get a high number, don’t panic. Expect some normal variations between days. Remember things like emotion, stress, exertion, or pain temporarily raise blood pressure, and this is not necessarily the same as poorly controlled blood pressure. Your blood pressure will typically be a little higher in the morning than the evening. Use your doctor’s guidelines to know what your action plan should be for high numbers.
    7. Check your blood pressure regularly, if your doctor has recommended home monitoring.  Checking it only when you are feeling bad can be misleading. But, do not become overly obsessed with checking if your blood pressure is alright. Two to three times a week is usually sufficient, unless your doctor recommends otherwise. Light headedness may indicate your blood pressure is too low, so do check in that instance. Low blood pressure is a frequent problem for older patients leading to falls or other problems, so it is important to note when this happens. Record your numbers in a log with the date and time, and bring the log to your next doctor’s appointment.

    This post was originally published on May 15, 2015

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  • Keeping mentally and physically healthy and engaged may prevent dementia

    Keeping mentally and physically healthy and engaged may prevent dementia

    A 2017 study by a worldwide team of dementia experts, published in Lancet, lays out the latest research findings on dementia, and the news is better than you might expect. There are a range of proven ways, particularly through mental and physical stimulation, to prevent or delay dementia.

    Dementia literally translates from the Latin to mean “out of mind.” It is a brain disorder that affects memory and the ability of people to process information. In 2015, 47 million people around the world, mostly people over 65, were living with dementia at a cost of $818 billion. By 2050, there are expected to be almost 150 million people living with dementia. Today, one in three older people die with dementia.

    Though there is no cure for dementia, people’s daily activities may delay or prevent its onset. And, for people diagnosed with dementia, there are ways to slow down the course of the disease and improve quality of life. The data suggest that people who are better educated, as well as more mentally and physically active and socially engaged, are less likely to be diagnosed with dementia.

    Not surprisingly, social isolation, not having friends or family to talk to and spend time with, and poor education, increases the risk of dementia. In addition, people with hearing loss who are not managing that condition are prone to getting dementia.

    Here are a few ways that have been found to delay or prevent dementia:

    • Treatment for hypertension or high blood pressure is important since high blood pressure has been found to cause dementia.
    • It is possible that more than one in three cases of dementia can be delayed or prevented through exercise, having a social network, and engaging your mind.
    • Smoking less.
    • Managing hearing loss,
    • Keeping your blood sugar level under control if you have diabetes.
    • Maintaining a healthy weight; and,
    • Treating depression.

    Getting a diagnosis of dementia in its early stages can allow for treatment interventions that maximize memory and cognition, and reduce stress and depression. There are many people living with dementia who are able to drive and function independently. You can learn more about the living with dementia movement, here.

    Here are ways to help people living with dementia remain independent. And, here are best practices for communicating with a person with dementia.

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  • Drug that treats high blood pressure increases risk of skin cancer

    Drug that treats high blood pressure increases risk of skin cancer

    A common medicine used to treat high blood pressure, hydrochlorothiazide, may drastically increase one’s risk for developing skin cancer, according to a new study out of Denmark.

    Researchers in Denmark looked at about 80,000 Danish cases of skin cancer and determined that those people who were taking hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) had a risk of developing skin cancer — more specifically, squamous cell carcinoma — that was up to seven times greater than those not taking the drug. The risk was highest in those who had taken HCTZ for more than 10 years. Other hypertension medicines were looked at as part of the study, but none of them increased the risk of skin cancer.

    “We knew that hydrochlorothiazide made the skin more vulnerable to damage from the sun’s UV rays, but what is new and also surprising is that long-term use of this blood pressure medicine leads to such a significant increase in the risk of skin cancer,” study leader Anton Pottegård, PhD, of the University of Southern Denmark, said in a statement.

    This post was first published in Medshadow.org.

    From Just Care: About 10 million people in the US take a hypertension medication containing HCTZ. HCTZ also has been found to be strongly associated with an increased risk of lip cancer. Brand name drugs with HCTZ include Microzide, Oretic and Esidrix.

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