Healthy Blood Pressure Secrets for Women

Chances are that as a woman you do a monthly breast exam. But when is the last time you checked your blood pressure?  It used to be thought that maintaining healthy pressure was a “man’s issue.” But did you know that women—and especially women in menopause—are at an even greater risk of not having healthy blood pressure then men? 

This was something I learned about healthy blood pressure in my own family. Despite our strong family history of high blood pressure and other heart health issues, the women in my family all had low blood pressure in their younger years. Our systolic blood pressures tended to hover around 100, and our diastolic numbers ran between 58 and 60.

But as many women in our family reached menopause, and their natural estrogen levels tapered off, their ability to maintain healthy blood pressure decreased significantly. This isn’t something to take lightly. Not having healthy blood pressure is linked with serious health issues like Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and renal failure—and can shorten a woman’s life by ten to twenty years! 

What’s even scarier is that high blood pressure often has no visible symptoms. In most cases you’ll feel just fine, except perhaps a vague headache. That’s why high blood pressure is often referred to as the “silent killer.”

Tomorrow, I’ll give you secrets for how you can protect yourself—so you can stay out of the blood pressure “danger zone.”

For more advice on healthy blood pressure for woman, visit www.drsinatra.com.