Treating High Blood Pressure with Ayurveda and Yoga

Across the world, blood pressure (BP) is a physical condition that affects the lives of most people. It is considered a silent killer, as increased blood pressure levels can go undetected for many years.

A World Health Organization report comes up with startling figures with regard to blood pressure.

The report states that BP alone causes about 50 percent of cardiovascular disease (CV) worldwide. The report further estimates that unfavorable blood pressure and cholesterol levels account for about nine million deaths annually, besides causing 75 million people to become unwell and lose out on healthy living. In total, 10 to 30 percent of adults across the world suffer from high blood pressure.

One in three Americans have high blood pressure

That is not all. The numbers with America are even more worrying. The number of American adults suffering from high blood pressure is a staggering one in three.

This means that one third of the entire adult American population stands the risk of suffering from, or already suffers from, cardiovascular disease. Of these, another one-third don’t even realize they have high BP.

About blood pressure

Blood pressure or BP, (also called hypertension commonly, though hypertension is more a consequence of high BP), is basically the pressure that the blood flowing in your body exerts on the walls of the blood vessels through which the blood flows.

As the heart beats, it pumps the blood into the arteries and veins, thus exerting pressure on their walls. Such pressure is known as systolic pressure.

The pressure exerted on the walls of the veins when the heart relaxes between any two beats is called diastolic pressure. Systolic pressure is more than the diastolic pressure.

Due to a variety of reasons, the blood pressure levels can either shoot up (high BP) or plummet (low BP). Both these conditions affect the normal functioning of an individual. In both these instances, (high and low BP) both, or either, of the systolic and diastolic pressures is affected. In this article, we will focus on high BP.

Measuring blood pressure

Blood pressure is measured on the mercury column of a sphygmomanometer. The normal systolic pressure is 120 mm Hg (millimetre of mercury) while normal diastolic pressure is 80 mm Hg. Clinically, these numbers are represented as 120/80.

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