Normal Blood Pressure By Age

Too much salt in your diet causes you to retain fluid, making it harder for your heart to pump blood through your body, leading to high blood pressure. Reducing your intake of sodium chloride to 1,500 milligrams a day may help bring down your blood pressure.

Second Misconception Is That High Blood Pressure Can’t Be Prevented

1. Keep your weight at a healthy level.
2. Eat a healthy diet.
3. Limit how much salt you eat.
4. Limit how much alcohol you drink.
5. Don’t smoke tobacco, and minimize your exposure to secondhand smoke.
6. Get regular exercise.
7. Don’t let stress build up.

When there’s no obvious cause, doctors typically treat high blood pressure with medication. But certain risk factors are reversible, like quitting smoking, managing stress, following a healthier diet with less salt, getting regular exercise and losing weight.

Anxiety doesn’t cause long-term high blood pressure (hypertension). But episodes of anxiety can cause dramatic, temporary spikes in your blood pressure.

The previous guidelines set the threshold at 140/90 mm Hg for people younger than age 65 and 150/80 mm Hg for those ages 65 and older. This means 70% to 79% of men ages 55 and older are now classified as having hypertension. That includes many men whose blood pressure had previously been considered healthy.

As it turns out, both systolic and diastolic blood pressure are important. Per the most recent guidelines, you have what’s called elevated blood pressure if your systolic blood pressure reading is 120 to 129 mm Hg (which stands for millimeters of mercury).