Steps to Take to Avoid High Blood Pressure Medicine

High blood pressure or hypertension causes the blood vessels to become weak or even to clog up. Overtime, this can cause heart attack, stroke, kidney failure and even heart failure. For this reason, many people with high blood pressure need to take medications to prevent these conditions and several of the symptoms associated with high blood pressure. However, these medications can cause several annoying symptoms, so some people look for ways to come off the medication.

Lifestyle Changes

• The first thing to do if you are smoking is to stop. The drug contained in cigarettes, nicotine, causes your blood vessels to constrict, which in turn makes your heart work harder. When this happens, it also has to beat faster. All of these processes temporarily raise the blood pressure. Stopping this habit can lower your blood pressure and decrease your chances of getting heart disease. In addition to smoking, drinking also increases your blood pressure. If you drink alcohol and you have high blood pressure, Familydoctor.org recommends cutting your drinking down to one or two drinks per day. If you find that it still increases your blood pressure, recommendation is to stop.

  If you are overweight and have high blood pressure, losing weight will significantly reduce your blood pressure. Physicians recommend regular daily exercise for 20 minutes or more per day to help you lose weight, keep your heart healthy and lower your blood pressure. Walking briskly 20 minutes a day will help to decrease your blood pressure.

  The next thing to do is to cut sodium. Not everyone's blood pressure is affected by sodium, but some people's are. The recommendation, if you have high blood pressure, is to cut the amount of sodium you have down to 2,400 mg or less each day, although your physician may request you to lower it even more than this. In order to accurately cut down the amount, you must read your food labels, not add extra salt to your food and cut foods such as cheese and processed snack foods.

  Stress is another thing that causes your blood pressure to rise unduly. It is not always easy to avoid stress or stressful situations, so the recommendation is that you learn stress-reducing techniques. One popularized technique is controlled breathing. In this technique, you will breathe in and out rhythmically and deeply. There are many names for this technique, but they all work similarly. They are used to lower your heart rate in the midst of stress and to promote general relaxation. One method is to breathe in through your nose deeply, for a count of seven, and breathe out through your mouth as if you are breathing through a straw, for a count of 11. This is known as the 7-11 breathing method.

  Regular practicing of these methods will help to reduce the amount of medicine you're taking to lower your blood pressure, including changing the types of medications you're on.