Managing your blood glucose, or blood sugar, as well as your blood pressure and cholesterol are crucial to preventing heart disease and stroke. You need to work with your physician or other health care professional in order to do this.

When your health care professional says your blood pressure is "140 over 95" or your cholesterol is "150 mg/dL" it is important to know what these numbers mean. Click on the links below to find out the common numbers you should know about:

Know Your Numbers: What's Your Blood Pressure?

An estimated 65 million adult Americans -- nearly half of them women -- are thought to have high blood pressure ("hypertension" is the medical term), up from 50 million a decade ago, according to the American Heart Association.

High blood pressure is blood pressure that stays at or above 140/90. Left untreated, high blood pressure can result in permanent damage to the small blood vessels of the body, which can damage vital organs and increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. Even slightly high blood pressure levels can double your risk for disease.

More men than women suffer from high blood pressure until women reach their mid-50s. Then it become an equal playing field, with a woman's risk for the high blood pressure then becoming equivalent to a man's. High blood pressure can occur in both children and adults, and the condition is alarmingly on the rise among children. But it is more common in adults, particularly where there is a family history of high blood pressure. African Americans and Latinos also have a higher risk than whites of developing it. Other risk factors include: increasing age, being overweight, smoking, sensitivity to salt, an inactive lifestyle, heavy alcohol consumption, heavy alcohol consumption, and women who take oral contraceptives. Women who take supplemental estrogen are advised to take it at the lowest dose for the lowest possible time as a result of clinical studies linking to increased risk for heart disease, heart attacks, stroke and breast cancer.

Understanding Blood Pressure
Blood pressure -- the force of blood against the walls of arteries -- is recorded as two numbers: systolic pressure (as the heart beats) over diastolic pressure (as the heart relaxes between beats). For example, a blood pressure measurement of 120/80 mm hg (millimeters of mercury) is expressed verbally as "120 over 80."

A normal blood pressure for a healthy individual 18 years and older is less than 120/80 mm hg. However, a blood pressure reading between 120/80 mm hg and 139/89 mm hg is now considered prehypertensive (a red flag for potential high blood pressure problems).

High blood pressure, or hypertension (140/90 mm hg or above), increasing your risk for heart disease, kidney disease and stroke. Hypertension often called "the silent killer" has no warning signs or symptoms. Once high blood pressure develops, it usually lasts a lifetime.

Blood pressures are now categorized as normal, prehypertension, hypertension stage 1, or hypertension stage 2. Here are the categories and important numbers to know:

What you can do

You can help to prevent or control high blood pressure by doing each of the following:

•	Eating healthfully (Look into the government's DASH (dietary approaches to stop hypertension) diet. You can learn more about this diet and find some menus that are low in salt and calories here: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov).
•	Maintaining a healthy weight
•	Being physically active
•	Limiting your alcohol intake (two drinks a day or few for men and one or fewer for women -- a drink is 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of liquor)
•	Quitting smoking
•	Seeing your health care professional for regular checkups and taking your blood pressure-lowering medication, if your doctor prescribes one
•	Learning to manage stress

To learn more, click here and visit the high blood pressure topic at this Web site.

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Create Date: 2/9/05 Date Last Updated: 2/9/05