What to do with high blood pressure at home - first aid for high blood pressure and high pulse

In the old days, Scottish monks strengthened their strength with small portions of whiskey. Alcohol made it easier to endure harsh winters, cope with joint pain due to the eternal dampness of the monastery walls, and digest rough food. Modern scientists confirm: a dose of 20–30 g of strong drink really has a healing effect. It is especially interesting to see how whiskey affects blood pressure.

Mechanism of action. Once in the blood, the ethanol contained in whiskey dilates blood vessels. The drink acts very quickly, so blood pressure drops within 5-10 minutes after drinking alcohol. It has been experimentally proven that 50–70 g of whiskey lowers blood pressure by 20 mmHg.

But this does not mean at all that with an increase in the dose of alcohol, the pressure will continue to decrease. On the contrary, if you cross the threshold of 70 g of whiskey, then after 30 - 40 minutes your blood pressure will begin to rise. And if you drink 50–70 g daily, the body will get used to it, and over time the pressure will drop less and less. That is, whiskey is not suitable for constant regulation of blood pressure.

The effect of the drink largely depends on the individual characteristics of the body. So, for some, after the first sip of the drink, the pressure rises.

Normal blood pressure: what is upper and lower pressure

Blood pressure is measured using a device called a tonometer. A cuff (a wide band that compresses) is placed on the arm. This cuff is attached to a device that measures the pressure inside your arteries. When you turn on the blood pressure monitor, the cuff tightens and then slowly relaxes again. It's quick and painless. Eventually, the device will show your blood pressure.

Blood pressure is measured in millimeters of mercury. The blood pressure reading consists of two numbers, for example 120/75. The first (top) number is the pressure when the heart beats (systolic pressure). The second (lower) number is when the heart relaxes (diastolic pressure).

High blood pressure usually does not cause symptoms. The only way to know if your blood pressure is elevated is to measure it. For example, a value of 110/70 is within the normal range for blood pressure; 126/72 – high blood pressure; value 135/85 – stage 1 hypertension (mild), etc. (see table).

What causes high blood pressure

For most people, there is no single cause for high blood pressure. However, there are a number of factors that increase the likelihood of developing hypertension. These are the so-called risk factors - controllable and uncontrollable. You can adjust:

. When a person smokes, the incoming nicotine increases blood pressure. Over time, this damages the arteries, increasing the risk of heart attack or stroke.
Eating excess processed foods and salt. Many processed foods contain a lot of salt. Excess salt intake causes the body to store excess water, which increases blood pressure.
Drinking excess alcohol too often. Drinking alcohol temporarily increases blood pressure. Excessive alcohol consumption on a regular basis can lead to hypertension.
Excess weight. Excess weight increases the risk of high blood pressure. Even losing just a few pounds can lower your blood pressure.
Insufficient activity. If a person moves more and sits less, blood pressure decreases.
. Hormones produced by the body during stress increase blood pressure. Researchers are still trying to understand the exact link between long-term high blood pressure and ongoing stress.

Uncontrollable risk factors include:

. If a patient has type 1 or type 2 diabetes, they are twice as likely to develop high blood pressure.
Kidney disease or other gland problems. Sometimes a serious disease that affects the kidneys, arteries, heart, or endocrine system can cause high blood pressure.
Aging. Blood pressure naturally increases with age.
Taking certain medications, such as birth control pills.
A parent or sibling with high blood pressure. High blood pressure runs in families, so if parents or siblings have problems, the risk of hypertension increases.

Diagnosis and treatment

Considering the fact that hypotension can serve as a symptom of many diseases or be an independent pathology, an examination is necessary to exclude diseases that could lead to a decrease in pressure. In this regard, there is no strictly defined list of examinations. To understand why the patient has low blood pressure, a diagnostic plan is drawn up and prescribed strictly individually, taking into account the patient’s history and previous diseases.

When establishing the cause of the disease, therapy usually uses complex methods aimed at restoring and strengthening the vascular wall and treating the underlying disease, if required, strengthening the autonomic nervous system and immune processes. General stimulants are prescribed, for example, drugs containing caffeine.

Many herbal preparations, so-called “folk remedies,” also have a tonic effect, which can also help with low blood pressure (hypotension). Self-administration of such drugs, however, requires great caution, because the same substances can have different effects on different people. Sometimes a paradoxical reaction and deterioration of the patient's condition may occur.

You should not self-medicate for hypotension! Only a doctor can prescribe the drugs necessary for a particular patient after he has examined the patient and established the cause of hypotension and the characteristics of its course.

Symptoms of high blood pressure

High blood pressure is often called the "silent killer" because in most cases it causes no symptoms. The only way to find out if it is there is to measure it with a tonometer. High blood pressure can sometimes be accompanied by one or more of the following symptoms:

Strong headache;
dyspnea;
dizziness;
nosebleeds;
severe anxiety.

Usually the headache is in the back of the head; during crises, one often feels dizzy and is accompanied by nausea and vomiting.

Causes of headaches in the temples and dizziness

Such symptoms can be present both in healthy people and as a consequence of the development of various diseases. In the first case, pressing sensations in the temples and dizziness may be a consequence of the influence of external factors:

alcohol intoxication;
overfatigue, especially during high physical or mental stress in combination with disturbances in sleep and rest patterns;
unbalanced nutrition and fasting;
regular stress and nervous exhaustion;
climate and time zone changes.

In such cases, there is usually no direct danger to human health, and to eliminate discomfort it is enough to eliminate the causative factor, i.e., reconsider your diet, schedule and working conditions, etc.

It is not uncommon to feel dizzy and have pain in the temples when staying in a stuffy room for a long time. These symptoms disappear after exposure to fresh air.

But also discomfort and pain in the temples with dizziness of varying intensity may indicate the development of pathological changes in the body, which, if left untreated, will progress and provoke a deterioration in the general condition and aggravation of symptoms. There are practically no pain receptors in the bone structures of the skull and brain tissue, and therefore they simply cannot hurt. The main sources of discomfort are blood vessels, meninges and cranial nerves. Therefore, if you regularly feel pressure in your temples and feel dizzy, you should find time and consult a doctor, because this may indicate:

arterial hypertension;
migraine;
traumatic brain injury (TBI), including previously received;
vertebrobasilar insufficiency.

Sometimes a feeling of pressure and bloating in the temples appears after eating foods containing sodium nitrite. These are usually a variety of sausages or Chinese dishes. For such cases, they even selected the appropriate terms: “sausage” headache and Chinese restaurant headache. They are a consequence of the body’s increased reaction to sodium nitrate, which leads to changes in the tone of blood vessels and, accordingly, fluctuations in blood pressure.

Arterial hypertension

High blood pressure is one of the most common causes of headaches in the temples and attacks of dizziness. This is often combined with pain in the back of the head, nausea, vomiting, deterioration in coordination of movements, redness of the face, as well as visual disturbances in the form of flickering spots before the eyes, etc.

The disease develops against the background of weakness of blood vessels, a decrease in the strength and elasticity of their walls, narrowing of the lumen as a result of the development of atherosclerosis, the development of kidney diseases, including pyelonephritis, glomerulonephritis, polycystic disease, etc. An increase in blood pressure can be established at home using mechanical, semi-automatic or automatic tonometer.

Normal blood pressure values are considered: systolic (upper) 110–130 mm Hg. Art. and diastolic (lower) 70-80 mm Hg. Art. High blood pressure is indicated by readings of more than 130/80, and arterial hypertension by more than 140/90.

Factors that provoke an increase in blood pressure are stressful situations, excessive tension and heavy physical activity. Often, in people suffering from arterial hypertension, attacks are caused by changes in weather conditions.

Arterial hypertension, even moderate, cannot be ignored. A periodic increase in blood pressure, especially to high values, should be contacted by a cardiologist, since in such cases the risk of stroke increases sharply. Weakened blood vessel walls may not withstand high blood pressure and rupture, which can lead to bleeding in the brain, i.e. hemorrhagic stroke.

Migraine

Migraine is a very common problem today. It is characterized by pain not only in the temples, but also in the area of the eye, forehead, or covering one half of the head completely. In this case, migraine is always paroxysmal in nature and most often one-sided, although with each attack the side of the pain localization can change, as well as cover both halves of the head at the same time.

The hallmark of a migraine is a throbbing, bursting pain, the intensity of which often increases gradually over several hours. It can occur at any time of the day, although more often the attack begins in the morning. This may be accompanied by:

dizziness;
visual disturbances;
increased photosensitivity;
nausea and vomiting.

With migraines, increased pain is provoked by any body movements, but especially by the head and climbing stairs. Many patients with this diagnosis complain of deterioration in health when hearing loud noises, so during an attack, most of them try to stay alone in bed in a quiet, darkened room.

In some patients, an attack is preceded by an aura, that is, certain, strictly individual precursors appear. Some patients notice that they feel dizzy a few hours before the headache occurs, others talk about loss of visual fields, others pay attention to speech impairments or a combination of similar symptoms.

A migraine attack can be triggered by various external and internal factors, in particular:

changes in weather conditions;
diet disorders and alcohol consumption;
stressful situation;
lack of sleep;
taking certain medications, etc.

In this case, attacks can last for several hours or several days. This, combined with a high intensity of pain and the inability to perform one’s household and professional duties, significantly reduces a person’s quality of life. Therefore, if symptoms characteristic of migraines appear, it is worth contacting a neurologist and accurately describing how the attack begins, assessing the severity of pressure in the temples, the characteristics and nature of dizziness (are the surrounding objects spinning or is there a sensation of one’s own body rotating in space, is there an unsteadiness in gait or faintness). condition, etc.).

TBI

You may feel dizzy and have pain in your temples even after receiving a traumatic brain injury, and these symptoms can occur even some time after the action of the traumatic factor. Moreover, they can even be called typical for the recovery period.

TBI most often results from hitting the head on a hard surface. This is not always accompanied by a fracture of the skull bones, although it does not exclude it. In the acute period, i.e. immediately after injury, confusion, drowsiness, headache, vomiting, and nausea may be observed. In such cases, it is necessary to immediately go to an emergency department equipped with an MRI scanner, since severe impacts to the head can provoke the formation of intracranial hematomas, rupture of blood vessels and other serious complications that can be fatal. Subsequently, all patients will need to follow bed rest and other doctor’s recommendations.

Vertebro-basilar insufficiency

Vertebro-basilar insufficiency is a condition in which a disruption of the blood supply to the brain occurs due to a decrease in the lumen, compression of the arteries supplying it: 2 vertebral and/or basilar. A decrease in the volume of blood supplied to brain cells leads to their oxygen starvation. But it is the brain that is the most sensitive organ to hypoxia, and its long-term preservation can have extremely undesirable and dangerous consequences.

Impaired blood supply to the brain provokes a deterioration in its functioning, which is accompanied by:

headache, often in the temple area;
dizziness;
general weakness and decreased performance;
nausea;
hearing loss and tinnitus;
visual impairment, including the flickering of spots before the eyes.

Patients often notice a deterioration in cognitive abilities: concentration, memory.

Vertebro-basilar insufficiency is not a separate disease, but becomes a consequence of the development of pathologies of the blood vessels or the cervical spine. It is often provoked by atherosclerosis, if plaques form in the walls of the blood vessels of the vertebrobasilar region, as well as inflammatory processes in them.

No less often, cerebrovascular accidents and associated headaches and dizziness are caused by pathologies of the cervical spine. These include osteochondrosis, spondylosis, protrusions and herniated intervertebral discs. Their development is based on degenerative-dystrophic changes in the intervertebral discs, as a result of which they become deformed. This is initially accompanied by a crunch in the neck when moving and aching pain as a result of exacerbation of inflammation. Gradually, pathological changes progress, disc tissues lose elasticity, which creates the preconditions for the formation of protrusions, and then intervertebral hernias. In parallel with this, changes can occur in the vertebral bodies themselves with the formation of osteochondral growths on their surface - osteophytes.

The convergence of the vertebrae against the background of osteochondrosis, protrusions, which are protrusions and hernias, as well as osteophytes can mechanically compress and irritate the walls of the vertebral arteries. This leads to a decrease in their lumen and the development of vertebrobasilar insufficiency with pain in the temples and dizziness.

What to do with high blood pressure

There are two types of hypertensive crises - both require immediate attention, as they threaten serious complications. It is important to know what to do if you have high blood pressure at home, and how to provide first aid.

If your blood pressure is 180/120 or higher, wait about five minutes and try again. If the second reading is as high and you do not experience any other associated end-organ symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath, back pain, numbness or weakness, vision changes or difficulty speaking, it will be considered an uncomplicated hypertensive crisis . Your doctor may simply adjust or add medications, but the condition rarely requires hospitalization.

If your blood pressure is 180/120 or higher, a high pulse with high blood pressure, you are experiencing any other symptoms of end organ damage such as chest pain, shortness of breath, back pain, numbness/weakness, vision changes, or difficulty with a speech, it is important to know what to do. This is a complicated crisis. Don't wait for your blood pressure to drop on its own; call an ambulance.

High blood pressure danger

A hypertensive crisis (high blood pressure or BP) is a condition when blood pressure rises quickly and sharply, with readings of 180/120 or higher. The consequences of uncontrolled blood pressure in this range can be serious and include:

stroke;
loss of consciousness with dangerous injuries;
memory loss;
acute cardiovascular diseases;
eye damage and visual disturbances;
loss of kidney function;
aortic dissection;
angina pectoris (unstable chest pain);
Pulmonary edema (fluid reserve in the lungs).

If you have been diagnosed with high blood pressure, monitor your readings and take your medications. During an emergency, having the notes with you can provide valuable information to the medical team providing treatment.

Recipes with whiskey

Considering that the volume of pure whiskey, which is guaranteed not to increase blood pressure or even lower it, is practically very small, you can create the illusion of long-term active participation in the celebrating company by drinking cocktails based on it.