Can diabetes cause high blood pressure?
Diabetes and high blood pressure (hypertension) often occur together. A person with diabetes is twice as likely to have high blood pressure as a person without diabetes.
Diabetes damages the arteries and makes them targets for hardening, called atherosclerosis. This can cause high blood pressure, which, if left untreated, can lead to problems including damage to blood vessels, heart attack, and kidney failure.
In this article we will talk about hypertension and diabetes, as well as discuss ways to prevent these problems.
What is the recommended blood pressure range for people with diabetes?
Blood pressure should be below 140/80 mmHg for people with diabetes or below 130/80 mmHg for kidney or eye diseases or any conditions that affect blood vessels and blood supply to the brain. But it's important to talk to your doctor about your individual goal.
Although you may not have any symptoms of high blood pressure, it can harm your health if left untreated. This is due to increased pressure on the heart, eyes, kidneys and other organs.
What are the symptoms of high blood pressure?
High blood pressure is sometimes called a silent problem or a silent killer because it usually has no symptoms. Some people with very high blood pressure say they have a headache, but this is rare.
According to the American Heart Association, almost half of Americans over the age of 20 have high blood pressure. Half of people with high blood pressure don't know they have it.
The most reliable way to find out about an increase in blood pressure is to measure it using a blood pressure monitor. This can be done by your doctor, and for more frequent measurements, we recommend that you have such a device at home. Modern devices are accurate and easy to use.
What are the causes and risk factors of high blood pressure?
High blood sugar levels can lead to so-called atherosclerosis. This is when fatty material accumulates inside the blood vessels, which narrows them. The narrower the blood vessels, the higher the pressure. The greater the load on your blood vessels, the harder it is to push blood through important areas of your body.
There are other risk factors that you can't do much about:
● your age
● family history of high blood pressure
● it depends on your ethnic origin
And there are risk factors that you can control:
● too much salt in your diet
● overweight
● lack of physical activity
● Smoking
● excessive alcohol consumption
● the way you handle stress
● excessive caffeine consumption
If you make changes to your diet and lifestyle, you can reduce the risk of developing high blood pressure.
How can this be prevented or treated?
Diabetes and high blood pressure can be dealt with by changing your lifestyle. We talked about ways to combat high blood pressure in people with diabetes in one of the videos. You can watch it here.
Much of what you do to treat diabetes will also help with high blood pressure:
● Monitoring your blood sugar levels
● Quitting smoking
● Eating healthy
● Exercising most days of the week
● Keeping your weight within the normal range
● Not drinking too much alcohol
● Limiting your salt intake
● Visiting your doctor regularly
One of the first steps to solving the problem of high blood pressure is simply to know that you have it. You also need to know which range will be the healthiest for you. When you know these numbers, you can work with your doctor on how to reach the target blood pressure level.
We wish you good health and normal blood pressure!