Lowering Blood Pressure
Blood pressure refers to the force that your blood exerts against the blood vessel walls. When the force exerted is too strong, your blood pressure is said to be high. Also referred to as hypertension, high blood pressure is dangerous to your health because it causes your heart to work harder to pump blood and your blood vessels to harden, leading to heart failure.
High blood pressure or hypertension affects more men than women and is often diagnosed in people over the age of 65. Many people are unaware of their hypertension or simply ignore the warning signs until they develop more serious symptoms or worse, suddenly experience heart failure. Don’t wait for heart disease to strike. Learn the warning signs and take care of your heart with proper nutrition and lifestyle changes.
Signs and Symptoms
You may have high blood pressure if you experience a combination of the following:
- Dizziness
- Headache
- Insomnia or lack of restful sleep
- Redness on the face
- Hot palms and feet
- Shortness of breath
- Fatigue
- Palpitations
- Anxiety attacks
- Chest pain
Causes Read more..
Glaucoma
According to the World Health Organization, glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in the world today. It affects both males and females regardless of age, although it is more common among people over 60, and those suffering from diabetes. Glaucoma is an eye disease which puts pressure on the optic nerve found in the eye, and if left untreated, it may one day lead to loss of vision.
Symptoms
In most cases of glaucoma, there are hardly any warning signs of its onset until peripheral vision is lost. Regular eye examinations may detect the early stages of glaucoma and may lead to a successful treatment plan to prevent its progression.
Causes
Modern medicine views glaucoma as a disease that arises from extremely high pressure occurring inside the eyeball which pushes against the optic nerve and damages it. On the other hand, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) maintains that eye diseases like glaucoma indicate a liver problem. According to TCM, your eyes are closely connected to the liver such that poor liver function may be detected by merely examining your eyes. Furthermore, the liver works non-stop to filter blood and produces “heat” in the process. When you work too much, drink alcohol excessively, don’t get enough sleep and are generally stressed, your liver may produce too much heat which may rise upward towards the head and apply pressure on the eyes.
Aging and Stress – Not Perfect Partners
How many people do you know that unwind at the end of a stressful day by drinking alcohol? It might be a couple of scotches before dinner, a bottle of wine during dinner, or the ever-popular ‘night cap’ to help them get to sleep.
Alcohol in moderation is not a bad thing for most people, but when it is consumed to excess and used as a method for combating stress and inducing sleep, it is.
Life
Most of us, when we start out in our careers, are happy, healthy, optimistic and full of energy. But as the pressures of business, supporting families, mortgage commitments – life – take hold, many of us lose not just the joie de vivre, but our health suffers as well.
In the worst cases, people resort to prescription medications just to help them function on a day to day basis. Because this happens over time, quite often it’s not until we enter middle to old age, that the impacts on our minds and bodies become evident.
