Tag: blindness

All about Blood Pressure

What is blood pressure? Blood pressure is the force of your blood against your artery walls. When you have your blood pressure checked the reading has two numbers; one on top and one on bottom.

The top number is your systolic pressure. This is the force of your blood in your arteries when your heart beats. The bottom number is your diastolic pressure. This is the force of your blood in your arteries when your heart relaxes in-between beats.

Normal blood pressure would be a reading of 120/80 or lower. High blood pressure would be a reading of 140/90 or higher. If you have high blood pressure you are at a greater risk of a stroke or heart and kidney disease.

Many things can cause high blood pressure including physical inactivity, tobacco and alcohol use, stress and your diet. These are only a few things. Certain medical conditions and medications can also cause high blood pressure.

High blood pressure can cause your body to have certain effects. For instance it can cause a stroke. The high pressure can cause a weakened blood vessel to break causing it to bleed into the brain; thus leaving you with a stroke.

High blood pressure can also sometimes cause your blood vessels in your eyes to bleed or burst. If this happens your vision will be blurred or impaired and might even result in blindness. Another reason it is best to keep control on your blood pressure.

Along with a stroke or kidney disease high blood pressure can also cause a heart attack. Your arteries are what bring blood carrying oxygen to your heart muscle. If your heart is not getting enough oxygen you will experience chest pain. If the blood flow is blocked as well you will experience a heart attack.

Congestive Heart Failure is very common among people with high blood pressure. This is a very serious condition where your heart cannot pump enough blood to supply the needs of your body. It is never too late to start taking control of your health starting with your blood pressure.

Anyone can develop high blood pressure, even children. It is more common for African Americans to develop it. Many Americans will develop high blood pressure as they age but that doesn’t mean it is healthy.

Obesity plays a role in high blood pressure. If you are over weight you are at a higher risk of having high blood pressure as well as a stroke or heart disease. Try to lose at least ten pounds and this will help lower your blood pressure significantly.

Eating a healthy diet is a great way to lower or control your blood pressure. Limit your intake of salt and sodium and introduce more fresh fruits and vegetables into your diet. Once you establish your healthy diet you will have less worry of developing high blood pressure.

You should always have your blood pressure checked at your regular doctor visits. If you have high blood pressure and are concerned you can easily monitor from home. If you do this you want to have your doctor look at your home monitoring device to help ensure it is effective and you are operating it correctly.

Keep track of your blood pressure readings so you can see what is helping and what isn’t. Sometimes regular lifestyle changes alone won’t help as much as they would combined with blood pressure medication. Your doctor will be able to tell you what the best option for your needs would be.

Help With Quitting Smoking

Enhancing the quality and length of your life by quitting smoking is a worthwhile effort. It is definitely not an easy task, but it can be accomplished with time and patience. To quit smoking successfully, finding out what your options are. Knowing where to go for help is a wise first step. Quitting smoking is the best move that you can make for your health and the health of all of those around you. Just about everyone knows by now that smoking causes diseases that shorten your life or those that may even end it. Diseases such as lung cancer, throat, esophagus, bladder, and kidney, and pancreas cancers are some horrible things caused by smoking for a start. Not to mention some leukemia, stomach, and cervix cancers, and newly added by the Surgeon General is pneumonia. People who smoke are more than three times as likely to die due to heart attack as non smokers. Smoking is a major risk factor for a disease that narrow the blood vessels that transport blood to the limbs and muscles called peripheral vascular disease as well as the disease that causes some strokes.

If thats not enough to convince you to stop smoking, lets look at your appearance. Premature wrinkling of skin, chronic bad breath, discolored fingernails and hair, and an increase risk of macular degeneration a leading cause of blindness in the elderly. Smoking over the age of thirty-five if you are a woman can put you in a high risk group for stroke, heart attack, and blood clots of the legs, low birth weight of babies and miscarriages. But the hopeful portion of this message is that if you decide to quite regardless of how long youve smoked or how much, quitting will help you to live longer. In as little as twenty minutes after quitting smoking the heart rate and blood pressure drops and in one to nine months following quitting smoking, circulation in your hands extremities and lung function increases. Shortness of breath decreases and your lungs begin to function properly, cleaning the lungs and removing mucus that causes infection. Fifteen years of non smoking and your risk of heart disease is that of non smoking persons. These benefits can be obtained from quitting smoking even if you are suffering from a smoking related illness already. Smoking is less socially accepted now more than ever. Smoking bans have been placed in just about every workplace in the nation along with airports, public buildings. Even friends may insist that you not smoke in their houses or cars. Some people may even find dating more difficult because of a bad smoking habit. So the social impacts of not smoking will probably change your life for the better if you quit.

If you have a family, that is another great motivation to quit smoking. The main reason is that the secondhand smoke could pose serious health problems for others who do not deserve such things. You should also consider what kind of role model you are being to any small children that you live with, whether they are your own kids, siblings, nieces and nephews, or any other relation. You may be living with kids who look up to you as an authority figure, and if you teach them that smoking is alright you will feel very guilty later in life.

Some of the many new products used to help an individual to stop smoking are really very effective. Counseling services, reading materials, medicines, and patches are all widely available and have produced some amazing results. Educational materials alone may be the best beginning start to an attempt to quit because once you know what kind of damage you are doing to your body the prudent and reasonable person will definitely see that it is the very best thing to do. However, it has been documented and researched that the highest success rates occur when a combination of methods are used simultaneously. Take the time and do it for yourself and your loved ones, quit for life.

Eliminate Your Fears of Lasik!

Thinking about eye surgery using a Lasik procedure is a big step, and many people are a little hesitant to ask the questions that they have. The Lasik procedure, though widely talked about, is not discussed in detail, and people tend to fear the unknown. This report addresses some of the more commonly held fears, and talks about the experience for the vast majority of people that undergo a Lasik procedure.

A most common fear when thinking about a Lasik procedure, or really thinking about any surgery in general, is the possibility of pain during or after the operation. Since the Lasik surgeon works on patients that are conscious, this is a widely held apprehension. In every operation the Lasik surgeon applies numbing drops into the eyes before the procedure starts, and the patient is also given a mild sedative to relax them and make sure that they are comfortable. Though a small pressure to the eye may be felt during the Lasik procedure, the process itself is relatively pain free.

The surgeon does use a laser in the eye to help reshape the cornea during the Lasik procedure. Many folks are worried about the laser being shone directly into the eye, or that they might look away and, due to this, develop a serious complication with their eyes and the Lasik laser beam effects. In actuality, the laser is only active for ten to fifteen seconds for each eye, and the Lasik machine has a tracking system that allows the beam to be on only when the eye is in the correct position.

Another general fear for people contemplating a medical procedure is fear of “the scalpel”. Any Lasik procedure uses only a very small microkeratome blade to approach the eye, or some more recent Lasik innovations have the laser itself created the flap and avoid using any hard surface at all. There is no reason to be concerned about a scalpel, for the Lasik physician does not use one.

Many wonder about the horror stories they hear about this or any other operation, and wonder about serious consequences like going blind. According the government statistics taken by the FDA, there are no reported cases of blindness due to a Lasik operation. Actually, the risk of a serious permanent complication due to the Lasik procedure is less than 1 percent, and the risk of any permanent complications even if not serious (such as light halos) is 3 percent or less. It is extremely rare for a patient to not have improved vision after a Lasik procedure.

If the thought of being awake and having your eyes open during the Lasik procedure bothers you, remember that you will be given a mild sedative for the procedure, and that your eyes will have numbing drops administered to them. If the thought of actually seeing the Lasik physician’s hand approaching your eye is bothersome, be comforted that the surgeon applies drops to the eye that blacks out the vision in that eye for ten to fifteen seconds, which is long enough for the procedure to be done for that eye.

This introduction has hopefully addressed the most common fears about the Lasik procedure. For anyone that might gain a better life quality with improved vision, please visit your local Lasik clinic and discuss the procedure in detail with the professionals there.

Understanding Your Blood Pressure

What is blood pressure? Blood pressure is the force of your blood against the walls of your arteries. Blood pressure consists of two number; a top and bottom number. The top number is the systolic pressure. The bottom number is the diastolic pressure.

Systolic blood pressure is the force of blood in your arteries as your heart beats. If your systolic number is higher than one hundred and forty you have high blood pressure. Even if your diastolic number is not high you can still have ‘isolated systolic hypertension.’ This means only your systolic number is high.

This is more common for older Americans. This pressure usually increases with age whereas diastolic pressure decreases after fifty-five. You might not know if you have isolated systolic hypertension so ask your doctor if you are concerned.

Diastolic blood pressure is the force of blood in your arteries when your heart relaxes between beats. For younger people this is a very important number. The higher this pressure is the more you are at risk. This blood pressure lowers as you get older and your systolic increases. Therefore diastolic is more important in younger people and systolic in older.

Normal blood pressure is less than one hundred and twenty over less than eighty. If your pressure is between the normal numbers and one hundred and thirty-nine over eighty-nine, you have what is called prehypertension. This puts you at risk to develop high blood pressure in the future but it easily preventable.

Hypertension is a name for high blood pressure. Having high blood pressure puts you at risk for heart disease or even strokes. High blood pressure makes your heart work harder than it should and can lead to blindness, kidney disease and even congestive heart failure.

According to statistics high blood pressure killed over fifty-four thousand people in 2004. Statistics also show that twenty-eight percent of people have high blood pressure and aren’t even aware of it. Are you one of them?

You should be aware of the risks of high blood pressure so you can avoid them as best as you can. High blood pressure is a risk for stroke and heart disease. While some risks can be altered or fixed, some cannot. For instance if you use tobacco or are overweight you are at risk for high blood pressure.

You can easily fix this by trying to quit using tobacco and watching your diet to help lose weight. If you have trouble doing either of these on your own, consult your physician. They may be able to prescribe you something or give you useful information to help.

High blood pressure can affect certain parts of your body as well. You might suffer from a stroke. This happens because the high blood pressure can break a weak blood vessel leaving it to bleed into the brain. Also if you have a blood clot blocking a narrow artery, you can also experience a stroke.

Sometimes impaired vision or blindness can occur from high blood pressure. It might eventually cause your blood vessels in your eye to bleed or burst leaving you with blurred or impaired vision.

Your arteries harden as you age, even more so for those in your heart, brain and kidneys. These harder arteries are associated with high blood pressure. When this happens your kidneys and heart have to work harder.

If you have any questions or concerns about your blood pressure ask your doctor. They can answer any questions you might have and find a solution if you do in fact have high blood pressure or might be prone to it. It’s never too late to take care of your body, including your blood pressure.