People often act, eat, and exercise as their parents and siblings do. The genes and habits that cause us to have central obesity, to be sedentary, to smoke, or to follow poor diets cluster in families. She should look at her risk factors and lifestyle and make the changes that are possible to avoid repeating her family history. Age Blood Pressure Blood pressure is measured in terms of systolic and diastolic pressures. The first figure is the systolic pressure and the second figure is the diastolic pressure.
Systolic pressure is the measurement taken when the heart contracts and pumps blood to the body.
Diastolic pressure is the measurement taken when the heart is relaxed and the chambers are open and filling with blood. Hypertenison, where the systolic pressure on repeat testing is greater than 140 or the diastolic is greater than 90, requires treatment to reduce your risk of heart attack, stroke, heart failure or kidney failure. You are at increased risk for hypertension if you are older, sedentary, overweight, have a family history of hypertension, have diabetes, or are African-American. Beginning at age 50, hypertension is more common in women than in men and by age 65 more than half of women have hypertension. Excerpted from The American Medical Women's Association Women's Complete Healthbook, edited by Roselyn Payne Epps and Susan Cobb Stewart.