High Blood Pressure

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 802, 3 December 1954, Page 30

High Blood Pressure

This is the text of a talk on. health broadcast recently from ZB, YA and YZ ‘stations of the NZBS by

DR

H. B.

TURBOTT

Deputy-

Director-General of Health

ANY people nowadays are being diagnosed as having high blood pressure. This is true in our country, as in all of the more developed countries of the world. Persistent high blood pressure is a health hazard, for it puts a big burden on the heart and kidneys, leading to heart failure and inability of the kidney to do its filtering functions @ffectively. In U.S.A. and Europe high blood pressure has become a major trouble. It follows. the stresses and strains, emotional and mental, of pre-sent-day life in advanced countries. Undeveloped countries don’t seem to be worried with high blood pressure in their peoples, Everybody has blood pressure. You have to have it to live. The blood is kept at a certain pressure in the blood vessels through constant nerve control. You are not conscious of this. If ‘the blood pressure increases or decreases nerve centres in the vessel walls record the rise or fall, and stimulate other nerve endings to widen or tighten up the walls to keep the blood pressure even and normal. This is a delicate automatic nerve action. If it is upset, adjustments aren’t made and you have a high or low blood pressure. The former, the high one, is the usual result. The things that cause unbalance in this regu-

iy. a ttt Vt) le a! lation are most commonly emotional ones. Not passing upsets, but any stress or strain of a continuous nature-long periods of working at high pressure, or simply overwork even without the high pressure, anxiety, repeated emotional upsetsand-diséords. The strain of over?

work or the stress of worry, if long continued, causes the brain to stimulate some internal or endocrine glands and hormones flow into the blood stream. The adrenal glands over the kidneys contribute hormones that dislocate the regulatory automatie nerve control in the blood vessel walls) The tightening up from stress is not offset by the lowering pressure

mechanism, and you have a continuous higher blood pressure than normal. There are other things that help stress and strain to raise blood pressure. The tendency to develop this trouble does run in families. It’s nice to know that none-of your forebears developed high blood pressure. If there is such a story in the family the present generation should recognise there may be some constitutional weakness and not live lives of constant stress and strain. There is a lot of work going on to determine whether the diet is a factor. All that is certain at the moment is that unbalanced diets are unwise, and too fatty a diet may have something "to do with it, but nothing is proven yet. .

It is wise to keep the weight down, particularly after midlife. There should be no abuse of alcohol or tobacco. Of these two, tobacco is known to contract blood vessels, Heavy smoking is unwise if there's a family history of high blood pressure, and smoking at all should only be according to your doctors advice if you have a high blood pressure.

If there is a persistent high level that may cause disease or failure of heart or kidney, modern medicine tries to bring the level down. Drugs are many, but most of them powerful enough to reduce pressures upset other body functions while doing so, They are used mainly to secure reductions from dangerous levels. Many diets are advocated, but no one should attempt dieting apart from medical advice. Overweights will need to get their weight down to the correct level. Any diet that’s going to benefit a high blood pressure, such as the rice diet, or the saltless diet, is difficult to undertake without a doctor's guidance. In point of fact, diets act like drugs. They bring blood pressures down, but can’t always be relied on to keep them there. Sometimes surgery is tried, cutting nerves to shut off abnormal regulatory impulses. The Mayo Clinic advise that this procedure has the best chance of success in young people with severe grades of high blood pressure. The majority of folk with high blood pressure need only to adjust their lives to dodge emotional upsets, worries and anxieties. They should have real holidays, relax at every opportunity, and be moderate with alcohol and tobacco and in their eating. More rest and sleep, and less strain, anger and worry, and your blood pressure will probably take care of itself.