Healthy lifestyle 'just as good as drugs' for high blood pressure

[hunybee]

Healthy lifestyle 'just as good as drugs' for high blood pressure: Diet and exercise cut risk by two thirds





http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...-pressure.html




Exercising regularly, keeping weight down, drinking in moderation and eating plenty of vegetables can cut the chances of developing high blood pressure by two thirds, say researchers.

The impact of these measures on high blood pressure was much bigger than expected, a study found, and in some cases could even be just as effective a way to treat sufferers as prescribing drugs.

Just walking to work and restricting alcohol to two drinks a day can ‘reduce the risk markedly’, according to the study of more than 20,000 people.
Every day there are 350 preventable strokes or heart attacks in the UK caused by high blood pressure.

In developed countries such as the UK, the lifetime risk of developing high blood pressure is now 90 per cent, and six million Britons take drugs to control it.

People with hypertension – the medical term for high blood pressure – are already routinely advised to make the lifestyle changes highlighted in the study but the effect far surpassed expectations.

The Finnish study followed 9,637 men and 11,430 women aged 25 to 74 who did not have hypertension........

[nvscanman]

"Healthy diet just as good"......



Sorry....I must disagree. While a proper lifestyle can make a huge difference and in
many cases prevent or eliminate hypertension there are plenty of organic conditions
that result in having hypertension....hypertension that will not respond to non
pharmacological interventions. While the holistic approach to controlling blood pressure
is and should be the first alternative it doesn't always work....and hypertension, like
diabetes is a gateway disease that will if left untreated lead to many many other serious
health conditions. So diet and exercise are important....but in the end what is more important
is controlling hypertension. If that requires medication than that is the path that must be taken.

[hunybee]

well, it didn't exactly say that healthy diet was just as good.

it said a healthy lifestyle (which would include a healthy diet) was "just as good" as drugs, but that was what the title of the article paraphrased from this:

Exercising regularly, keeping weight down, drinking in moderation and eating plenty of vegetables can cut the chances of developing high blood pressure by two thirds, say researchers.

The impact of these measures on high blood pressure was much bigger than expected, a study found, and in some cases could even be just as effective a way to treat sufferers as prescribing drugs.

which i agree, was sloppy in the paraphrasing.


basically, what you said is pretty much what the article said.