The pressure is on!

Blood pressure is the force of blood pushing against the walls of your arteries as the heart pumps blood. When this force is too high, it’s called high blood pressure, or hypertension. Untreated high blood pressure can have serious consequences on the rest of the body, including stroke, heart failure, vision loss, and kidney disease.

Hypertension can halt the bedroom heat.

Blood vessel damage from high blood pressure reduces blood flow throughout the body—including your sexual organs. High blood pressure can affect blood flow to the penis, causing erectile dysfunction in men. In women, high blood pressure can cause fatigue,  which can affect sex drive, and if blood flow to the vagina is reduced, can affect how her body responds before and during sex.

High BP is often a silent killer.

Most of the time, high blood pressure has no symptoms. Because it can only be detected by getting your blood pressure checked, high blood pressure can go on undiagnosed for years. Many people only get symptoms when their high blood pressure has started to cause damage to the body and cause complications, like eye damage, or heart and kidney disease.

Eat to treat!

Nutrition may be your greatest superpower in the fight against high blood pressure. Limiting alcohol and caffeine, reducing sodium in the diet, and eating more heart-healthy produce can significantly improve hypertension levels. As for potassium, increasing your intake—by eating more potassium-rich foods like bananas, spinach, and sweet potatoes—can help counteract some of sodium’s negative effects on BP. Here’s how to lower your blood pressure (and weight!) with the DASH diet:

It’s a family of factors.

There are many factors that can contribute to your risk of developing high blood pressure.

• Genes: Family history can increase your risk of developing high blood pressure. Some people have a high sensitivity to sodium and salt, which can run in their family and may also increase their risk.
• Ethnicity: Hypertension is more common in African American adults than in Caucasian or Hispanic American adults.
• Gender: Before age 55, men have a high risk of developing hypertension than women. After age 55, women’s risk is higher than men’s.
• Age: The older you get, the higher your risk. About 65% of Americans age 60 or older have high blood pressure.
• Certain medications: Medicines such as birth control pills, diet pills, some cold medicines, and migraine medicines may cause secondary hypertension (high blood pressure caused by medical condition or medicine).
• Unhealthy lifestyle: Being overweight, eating a diet that’s too high in sodium, drinking too much alcohol, living with chronic stress, and not getting enough physical activity can contribute to high blood pressure risk.

Know your numbers.

Under newly issued guidelines, blood pressure readings fall into one of four categories:

• Normal blood pressure is less than 120 (systolic) over less than 80 (diastolic).
• Elevated blood pressure is between 120 and 129 (systolic) over less than 80 (diastolic).
• Hypertension stage 1 is between 130 and 139 (systolic) over 80 to 89 (diastolic).
• Hypertension stage 2 is 140 or greater (systolic) over 90 or greater (diastolic).

Doctors will consider your BP readings along with other risk factors for heart disease to determine how to treat blood pressure outside of the normal range. For people at lower risk of heart disease, those with elevated BP or early-stage hypertension might start lifestyle changes like losing weight, exercising more, and eating more fruits and veggies and less processed food. On the other hand, doctors might advise people with greater heart disease risk factors to start BP meds off the bat to get to a healthier range.

Get checked on the regular.

The recommended frequency of blood pressure checks depends on your age and whether or not you’re living with chronic conditions. Healthy adults aged 40 years and over should get their blood pressure checkedonce a year. If you have high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, kidney problems, or certain other conditions, have your blood pressure checked more often. For adults 18-39 who are otherwise healthy have had normal BP readings in the past, get checked every three to five years.