Blood Pressure: Does your senior have high blood pressure? Try some of these ideas.
Stop Smoking
Smoking causes all sorts of health issues. For people with high blood pressure, nicotine, in particular, is a problem. Smoking affects arteries, which are already too tight because of high blood pressure. Talk to your senior’s doctor for tips about quitting.
Get Stress Under Control
When you get stressed, you can feel your blood pressure rise, right? Well, if your senior already has high blood pressure she needs to find ways to manage her stress. Journaling, gratitude, and relaxation exercises are all ideas she can try.
Reduce Salt Intake
Reducing sodium intake is a common recommendation for people with high blood pressure because salt can contribute to water retention. That’s a problem because it can make your senior’s circulatory system work harder than it should. With high blood pressure, it’s already doing that.
Make Other Dietary Adjustments
Besides salt, changing some of her other eating habits might help your elderly family member, too. Eating a lot of packaged foods, for instance, can cause her blood pressure to be too high. Switch the focus to fresh, whole foods instead.
Stop Drinking Alcohol
Alcohol intake is another issue that affects blood pressure levels. Keeping alcohol intake minimal and occasional may do more to help your senior to reduce her blood pressure than she might think. Logging blood pressure levels can help her to track this.
Start Exercising
Exercise doesn’t necessarily cure high blood pressure, but it can help your senior’s heart and circulatory system to get stronger. Talk to your senior’s doctor about whether she’s alright to start exercising. From there, look for an exercise that your senior likes and is more likely to stick with.
Get Weight Under Control
Being even a few pounds overweight can increase your elderly family member’s blood pressure more than she would like. She doesn’t have to lose a ton of weight all at once, but making a conscious effort to reduce her weight can work alongside some of these other tips.
Take Medication Exactly as Prescribed
If your elderly family member’s doctor prescribes blood pressure medication, she needs to take it exactly as prescribed. Taking doses irregularly or skipping doses can leave the medication ineffective.
Monitor Blood Pressure Regularly
Your senior won’t know if any of these changes are really working unless she starts monitoring her blood pressure on a regular basis. It’s easy to do, but it’s also easy to forget. A caregiver can help your elderly family member to remember and to log her blood pressure levels.
These are a lot of changes for your senior to embrace at once, so consider helping her pick one or two to focus on first.