Stress - the invisible killer of health! Beware that stress can cause young people's blood pressure to soar

Below is a stress response self-test form compiled by the editor. Come and assess whether you are under chronic stress!

1. Do you have low blood pressure and/or high blood pressure?

2. Do you feel dizzy when you stand up suddenly?

3. Do you have hypoglycemia?

4. Do you like sweet or salty foods?

5. Do you often have dark circles under your eyes?

6. Do you have sleeping disorders, such as insomnia and waking easily?

7. Do you still feel sleepy and tired after waking up?

8. Do you sometimes have trouble thinking clearly and concentrating?

9. Do you often have headaches?

10. Do you often get infectious diseases, such as colds?

11. Do you get tired easily when exercising?

12. Do you often feel stressed?

13. Do you sometimes feel tired but excited?

14. Do you often suffer from edema?

15. Do you suffer from panic attacks or are easily startled?

16. Do you sometimes experience palpitations?

17. Can you not get anything done without coffee?

18. Are you intolerant to alcohol, caffeine and some medications?

19. Do you often feel weak and dizzy?

20. Do your hands and feet sweat when you are nervous?

21. Do you often feel tired?

22. Do you often feel muscle weakness?

After finishing the questions, if you answered Yes to 14 questions, then you are under chronic stress.

Why does stress increase blood pressure? When people feel stressed, the sympathetic nerves are stimulated and excited, which can cause the heart rate to accelerate, blood vessels to constrict, and blood pressure to rise. When people are stressed, some people will sweat profusely, their hearts will beat fast, and their hands and feet will tremble. These are all because the sympathetic nerves are stimulated, which stimulates the adrenal glands to secrete catecholamines, causing the heart rate to accelerate, blood vessels to constrict, and blood pressure to rise. But this is only a short-term phenomenon, and it will calm down after a period of time. If chronic stress is long-term, the adrenal glands will secrete a large amount of stress hormone cortisol, causing blood vessels to constrict and blood pressure to rise.

In addition to being caused by disease, many young people suffer from high blood pressure due to emotions. People who are easily excited, easily excited, have bad tempers, always look back and forth, think over and over again and have difficulty making up their minds, are too anxious, engage in mental work and are highly nervous, are prone to early high blood pressure. If such young people suffer from high blood pressure, drug treatment is not effective.

Where does stress usually come from?

Work factors:

1. Heavy workload and high physical stress: such as high temperature, high radiation, or work that requires high physical exertion.

2. High mental and psychological pressure at work: drivers, researchers, doctors, etc. need to work with a high level of concentration.

3. Self-psychological imbalance at work: Especially when the rewards received are not proportional to the personal efforts, individuals are more likely to feel unfair and the sense of pressure is relatively increased.

4. Poor interpersonal relationships: Since many jobs require teamwork, if you cannot get along well with other team members, it will directly affect the smooth progress of the work. Once your mood is affected, stress will follow.

5. The workplace environment, such as noise, temperature, pollution, night shifts, etc., are all important sources of stress.

Lifestyle factors:

1. Some major accidents in life environment, such as death of relatives, divorce, job change, marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, buying a car, buying a house, etc. are all factors that cause stress.

2. We often face troubles in our daily lives, such as staying up late, getting sick, being stuck in traffic, being late for appointments, quarreling with family members, etc., which can be a great pressure on individuals.

3. Living environment: Cold, heat, humidity, solar radiation, environmental toxins, etc. can all cause stress on the body, and it is difficult to recognize.

Personality: The education and living environment of an individual since childhood will lead to different ways of coping with and viewing stress. External environments and events do bring stress to individuals; however, the same stress on different people will pose different threats; therefore, how an individual views stressful events, and how an individual copes with and regulates stress is crucial. Often young people with high blood pressure have a personality that is perfect and has high demands on themselves.

A key step for young people to prevent high blood pressure: stress management! Stress eventually leads to high blood pressure. Often, the time when you need to relax is exactly when you don’t have time to relax. Therefore, stress management is necessary to prevent problems before they occur.

Stress is unavoidable, but it is manageable. You can change your response to stress and make small changes to prevent chronic stress from leading to high blood pressure. Improving your ability to cope with stress can strengthen your energy reserves and improve your health.

Take a few healthy steps each week and see how it changes your ability to cope with and transform stress. Suggested ways to manage stress include:

Emotional changes are the most common cause of sudden increase in blood pressure. Anger, anxiety, and panic can cause a sudden increase in blood pressure, but it is often overlooked that excessive happiness can also cause a sudden increase in blood pressure. Both "bad things" and "good things" in life can cause emotional excitement and lead to increased blood pressure. Therefore, to prevent high blood pressure, we must not only avoid anger and anxiety, but also prevent "extreme happiness leading to sorrow."

In addition to stress management, young people should also pay attention to the following to prevent hypertension: 1. Quit smoking and drinking: Smoking is a risk factor for hypertension. Long-term heavy smoking can increase heart rate and blood pressure. Smokers with mental stress and type A personality have a 2-4 times higher incidence of cardiovascular accidents and myocardial infarction than normal people. Long-term heavy drinking, especially those who are greedy and easily drunk, often have hypertension, obesity, high blood lipids and high blood sugar.

2. Limit salt intake: The main component of salt is sodium chloride. Eating too much salt will lead to excessive sodium in the body, increase vascular resistance, increase cardiovascular burden, and increase blood pressure. Some people believe that 2g of salt per day will almost prevent hypertension; 3-4g per day will increase the incidence of hypertension by 3%; 4-15g per day will increase the incidence by 33.15%; 20g per day will increase the incidence by 30%.

3. Weight loss: Overweight and obesity can not only cause high blood pressure, but also easily lead to chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease and diabetes.

4. Environment and occupation: For young people with hypertension, noisy working environment and excessive mental work are prone to high blood pressure. Therefore, the working environment should be improved and work pressure and workload should be reduced.

5. Moderate exercise: Prevention of hypertension also requires moderate exercise to enhance cardiopulmonary function, improve the body's tolerance, and at the same time improve cardiovascular elasticity, effectively prevent cardiovascular and cerebrovascular aging and atherosclerosis, and effectively prevent and control the occurrence and development of hypertension.

6. Nutritional regulation

1) Increase the intake of potassium-containing foods: Increase dietary potassium intake to 5g per day by increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables eaten.

2) Increase the intake of magnesium-containing foods: For example, milk is rich in magnesium, calcium, and potassium. You can also consume 500-1000 mg/day of chelated magnesium.

3) Ensure the protein content in food: Some people with high blood pressure dare not eat meat and mainly eat vegetarian food, but they don’t know that high protein intake can lower BP, and non-animal protein is better than animal protein. Recommendation: 1.0-1.5g/kg/day.

4) Increase the intake of Omega-3 fatty acids/monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA): extra virgin olive oil (30-40g/day, about 3-4 teaspoons); or 3-4g/day of DHA and EPA, in a 3:2 ratio.

5) Garlic: 4 cloves of garlic or 10,000 mg of allicin per day. Ten clinical controlled trials found that the antihypertensive effect of garlic is dose-dependent: it can reduce blood pressure by 8.4/7.3 mmHg.

6) Ensure vitamin C intake: 500-1000 mg, serum levels maintained at 100umol/L.

7) Vitamin D: The recommended maintenance range for patients with hypertension is: plasma concentration level 50~80ng/ml.

8) Vitamin B6: 5 mg/kg/day (systolic/diastolic blood pressure decreased by 14/10 mmHg).

9) Arginine/Taurine: Arginine 10g/day can reduce blood pressure by 6/5-7mmHg. Food sources include lentils, hazelnuts, walnuts, peanuts, etc. Taurine 6g/day can reduce blood pressure by 9/4mmHg in the short term.

Click to follow "Functional Medicine Life Plus" to get more valuable health information and make your life healthier.