High blood pressure or the 'silent killer' is often only discovered by chance, writes Ciaran Brennan
ALMOST TWICE as many men know their partners' bra size than their own blood pressure, according to a recent survey by Britain's Blood Pressure Association.
It gave a startling insight into the lack of awareness of blood pressure among men.
Blood pressure is not gender specific, but men are at risk for a variety of reasons and at different ages.
According to the American Heart Association, men have a greater risk of high blood pressure than women until age 45. From age 45-54, the percentages of men and women are similar.
The Blood Pressure Association in Britain says that 31 per cent of men and 28 per cent of women in England have high blood pressure, while about 18 per cent of men have high blood pressure and are not receiving treatment for it compared with 13 per cent of women who have high blood pressure.
So why are men top of the league when it comes to blood pressure?
"Men don't go to the doctor as regularly as women, so they are much less likely to get their blood pressure checked, so that means they are less likely to know what their blood pressure is," says Peter Baker, chief executive of the Men's Health Forum in Britain.
Irish Heart Foundation president, Prof Eoin O'Brien, agrees that frequency of visits to a GP is a reason. He says that women are more likely to visit their GP during pregnancy or with their children and are, therefore, more likely to have their blood pressure checked.
"They are more likely to have it detected and they benefit a little bit in that regard but otherwise there isn't really any great difference between the sexes in our society."
New research published in The Lancet has found that high blood pressure causes at least 7.6 million premature deaths worldwide - about 13.5 per cent of the global total.
According to researchers, that means that almost one in five premature deaths each year is caused by high blood pressure and the problem is fast becoming a global epidemic.
Risk factors include: family history; smoking; age; excessive alcohol intake; excessive salt intake; high blood cholesterol; obesity; lack of exercise; stress and the use of certain drugs.
It has been dubbed "the silent killer" - approximately 50 per cent of those with high blood pressure are unaware that they have it. For most people with high blood pressure there are no tell-tale symptoms.
This means, therefore, that high blood pressure is usually diagnosed by chance, for instance at a routine physical check-up.
According to O'Brien, the "rule of halves" applies to blood pressure.
"Half of the people in the community who had high blood pressure didn't know they had it and, of the half who had it, only half were on treatment. Of those on treatment only half are achieving normal blood pressures," he says.
That's why the Irish Heart Foundation is launching its Know Your Numbers campaign to try to get people to know what their blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and body weight numbers are, and what they should be.
High blood pressure is the main risk factor for stroke and a major risk factor for heart attack, heart failure and kidney disease. People with high blood pressure are three times more likely to develop heart disease and stroke, and twice as likely to die from these as people with a normal blood pressure, according to the Blood Pressure Association.
"The tragedy is we have 10,000 strokes a year here in Ireland and we estimate that 5,000 are preventable," says O'Brien. "We could prevent half of the strokes if we got everybody who had high blood pressure down to normal, but we are not even getting a third of them down to normal."
Baker feels that national screening programmes are a key way of detecting and combating the disease.
"It is extremely easy to check for high blood pressure. It is also extremely cheap. You don't need any lab tests," he says.
However, O'Brien says the current method of checking for blood pressure that most people are familiar with from visits to their GPs is often not the most reliable. A phenomenon called white coat hypertension occurs in as many as 20 per cent of people with high blood pressure.
What happens is that these people have high blood pressure in the presence of a doctor or nurse, or in a hospital, but when they get away from the medical environment their blood pressures return to normal. The only way to exclude white coat hypertension is to use a device to measure blood pressure over a 24-hour period, he says.
If you have high blood pressure, it can be treated very effectively. Treatment may include a low-fat, low-salt diet, losing weight, quitting smoking, reducing alcohol intake, and getting more exercise.
"It is about preventing it happening in the first place and that is about watching your weight, watching your diet and being much more physically active," says Baker.
In addition, many medications can be used to reduce and control your blood pressure.
"The drugs have developed greatly over the past 10-15 years," says O'Brien. "We have a variety of drugs so you can always find a drug to suit somebody."
Blood pressure is the pressure of blood in the arteries.
If your blood pressure is high, it can narrow the arteries and blood vessels in your body and this can lead to damage to the brain or heart.
Your blood pressure numbers show how hard your blood is pushing against the sides of your blood vessels (arteries) as it travels round your body.
When you have your blood pressure measured it is written like this: 120/80mmHg, which, when said, is '120 over 80'.
The first number is the systolic pressure, when you heart pushes blood around your body. The second is the diastolic pressure, when your heart relaxes.
Blood pressure usually ranges between 90-250 for the top or maximum number (systolic) and 60-140 for the bottom or minimum number (diastolic).
A healthy blood pressure is a level of 120/80 or less, but the lower you can get it, the better, as blood pressure tends to rise with age.
And 140/90mmHg is the level used to diagnose high blood pressure for everyone, whatever your age.
It is important to remember that high blood pressure is never diagnosed after just one reading, but only when blood pressure levels are consistently at or greater than 140/90mmHg.
If this is the case, it will need to be treated.
Source: Blood Pressure Association