When the Nurse or PA (Physicians assistant) said my blood pressure was too high, I always told myself that after an hour in the waiting room, their blood pressure would be high also. I racked it up to hurrying around getting to the Doctors, the traffic, the weather, the wait, anything but my body needing attention. No one dies of high blood pressure, right?
You hear of so many people who have high blood pressure (hypertension) and you don’t see that as a leading cause of death on any national campaign, so I wanted to check out my assumption. So I went to the CDC (Center for Disease Control) to find out what the leading causes of death are in the United States. In 2009, Heart Disease was listed as number 1 and a Stroke was number 4. See the chart below….
- Heart disease: 599,413
- Cancer: 567,628
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 137,353
- Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,842
- Accidents (unintentional injuries): 118,021
- Alzheimer’s disease: 79,003
- Diabetes: 68,705
- Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,692
- Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,935
- Intentional self-harm (suicide): 36,909
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm/
According to WebMD, high blood pressure should also be considered a contributing factor to a stoke. They say that: “Uncontrolled high blood pressure increases a person’s stroke risk by four to six times. Over time, hypertension leads to atherosclerosis and hardening of the large arteries. This, in turn, can lead to blockage of small blood vessels in the brain. High blood pressure can also lead to weakening of the blood vessels in the brain, causing them to balloon and burst. The risk of stroke is directly related to how high the blood pressure is.”
http://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/guide/hypertension-high-blood-pressure-stroke
So that means to me that 728,255 people could have died in part because of high blood pressure. Uh OH, maybe I should take this more seriously. I am blessed to have reached 60 years of age and I am ready for the inevitable…after all “nobody makes it out alive” as they used to say on Westerns. But I don’t want to have a stroke and lie in a hospital bed for months or years, incapacitated and a drain on my family.
The Doctors advice was, lose weight, exercise more and start paying attention to your blood pressure. OK, I will get a sphygmomanometer or blood pressure monitor and start tracking my numbers. That is a whole lot easier than giving up my nightly bowl of ice cream!