How to Protect Yourself Against Cardiovascular Disease

Most health conscious Americans practice a regular routine of health maintenance activities designed to maintain physical and mental health. These activities range from controlling our diet to taking vitamins and health supplements to practicing regular physical and mental exercise.

If made aware of new medical advice leading to better health or disease prevention activities most of us would not hesitate to follow that advice, and yet, many of us fail to follow what is well established as one the best preventive practices known to medical field today and that is regular monitoring of one's blood pressure.

While hypertension has been shown to be a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases most of us do not routinely monitor blood pressure and as a result are completely unaware of our personal blood pressure reading. Far too many of us learn of our blood pressure reading during infrequent routine physicals examinations or even less frequent medical exams required to get health or life insurance.

Doctors tell us that there is no more important indicator of cardiovascular health than routine, accurate blood pressure readings.

During my last annual physical my doctor noted that my blood pressure was trending high and asked how frequently I monitored pressure readings. Reluctantly, I answered that my pressure was only checked annually, during my physical exam. My doctor suggested that at my age (middle aged) I should be more vigilant and should monitor my pressure if not daily, at least on a routine basis. He suggested daily monitoring as long as my blood pressure exceeded 120/80.

My doctor suggested that I purchase a self-monitoring blood pressure monitor that would allow me to take daily readings at home. He noted that this would have many advantages over having pressure readings made at local clinics, some which are:

The ability to take daily readings at the same time and place every day. My doctor explained that many of us suffer from "white coat syndrome" which causes many patients to have elevated blood pressure readings as a result of anxiety when visiting a doctor.

-The charting/recording of daily readings would allow me to see blood pressure trends and react to these.

-The maintenance of a blood pressure log and/or chart allows me to Gage over time the effects of changes in my life style as these affect blood pressure. For example, the effects of increased daily exercise or the effects of losing that extra 10 pounds of weight.

-The record of readings would also provide invaluable data for my doctor to analyze during my annual physical as opposed to the one reading in his office during the examination.

At his advice I followed my doctor's recommendation and purchased a self-monitoring blood pressure machine and a cuff designed to fit the size of my arm.

The cost of the monitor was lower than I expected, costing under $60.00 for both the machine and cuff.

I began a daily routine of checking my blood pressure at the same time daily. As the doctor had suggested my initial readings at home, while still elevated were lower than those recorded in the doctor's office (white coat syndrome?).

My routine is to take three readings daily, one immediately after the other (doctor's recommendation). I record each of these readings, and as I am a statistics nut, I also enter these readings into a spreadsheet on my computer from which I produce a trend chart. For those who want to maintain a personal log one can be downloaded from the following site: www.americanheart.org.

As I began to implement some of the suggestions my doctor had made to lower my blood pressure I monitored the effect of these changes on my recorded/charted readings.

Over time the effect of reduced salt and fat in my diet lowered my pressure by 10 points and provided real encouragement for continued efforts to take pro-active steps at controlling my pressure.

As I began a graduated program of increased exercise I saw dramatic effects in the recorded readings. Over a period of 10-12 weeks I increased my daily walking (at a fast clip) from one mile a day to three miles a day and saw my recorded pressure drop another 15 points to put my new readings below the targeted 120/80.

As a result of monitoring my blood pressure and my efforts to control it I am now healthier and feel better as I have lost weight and have significantly more energy. My plan is to increase my daily exercise to walk four miles a day and to monitor the effects.

My hope is that this article will awaken and inspire others to become more aware of the importance of cardiovascular health and how to control it.