Blood Pressure: Knowing Your Numbers
By: Traci Nelson, D.C., D.I.C.C.P.
Blood is the most universal fluid besides water in the human body. It carries oxygen and nutrients, serves as both a cooling and warming mechanism and carries away waste products. It simply is essential for the body to function and one method to analyze how well this process is occurring is blood pressure.
Blood pressure is the scientific measurement of how the blood is flowing from the heart to the rest of the body. Because the heart is a pump, the pressure on your veins and arteries is not constant. The pressure is higher with each beat of the heart and lower between beats. The maximum pressure when the heart is pumping is called the systolic pressure; this is the top number on your blood pressure reading. The lower pressure that occurs between beats is called the diastolic pressure and is the bottom number in a blood pressure reading.
Knowing your numbers is an essential aspect of evaluating your health.
Classification Systolic Diastolic
Normal <139mm Hg <89mm Hg
Borderline 140-159 90-94
Hypertension >160 >95
Keep in mind that your blood pressure can fluctuate due to a number of factors. Therefore, it is important that you standardize the way you measure your blood pressure. For example, after exercise or a large meal, your blood pressure is going to be significantly different than upon waking first thing in the morning.
If your heart and arteries have to do more work than they should, specifically pumping with more force to get the blood to the body, a multitude of negative health conditions may result. Family history and lifestyle are influential factors that have the ability to increase the demand on the heart and arteries, therefore increasing the risk for hypertension. Of the above-mentioned factors lifestyle is the one we can obviously manipulate in order to reduce our risk of high blood pressure, for example:
-Reduce stress
-Increase aerobic exercise
-Improve diet
-Reduce body fat
Your blood pressure is the easiest way to ensure functionality and good health. Unfortunately, high blood pressure has few symptoms, so the first symptom is usually serious. If you have concerns about your blood pressure or are considering a dietary or exercise program first consult with your physician.
Dr. Nelson has a private chiropractic practice in Bettendorf, specializing in the treatment of spinal conditions of children and pregnant women. She can be reached at Nelson Chiropractic at 359-9541 or nelsonchiro@aol.com.
Dr. Traci Nelson
Nelson Chiropractic
Do weather changes cause my back pain?
While it is true that people with back or other joint problems are often extremely accurate in predicting when storms are approaching, the weather change itself is not the cause of the pain. An underlying condition must first exist.
Here is how the weather changes and pain cycle probably work.
- Joint or ligament inflammation is present as a result of some type of recent or past injury.
- The extra collection of fluid from inflammation stretches sensitive tissue and membranes in and around the joint.
- Storm fronts follow a decrease in barometric pressure.
- Decreases in barometric pressure cause tissues and membranes in the body to expand and stretch even more which, like a balloon, will expand inside a vacuum.
- When an already sensitive and swollen tissue of a previously injured area expands in response to lowered barometric pressure of weather changes, pain nerve fibers are irritated and you become acutely aware of a storm that is coming.
Tissue inside the body must already be sensitive for weather changes to cause pain, otherwise everyone would have pain when storms are brewing.
Bettendorf, Iowa:
Headaches
So you have a headache....Your eyes hurt, your forehead is pounding, your neck is sore and tight, your scalp feels as if it is being slowly removed, lights bother you, noise sets your teeth on edge, and then there are your children, the house, dinner, your husband/wife and the daily demands of life. You would like to stop the world and get off!
Thousands of children and adults are afflicted with this headache "thing". As a matter of fact, headaches are the most common reason people seek chiropractic care. Headaches have been sold to the public as a problem which needs to be "treated", as a disease, or some sort of condition. We have gingerly been taught to believe that headaches need to be remedied, that no mercy should be shown, that they are bad, and we should not put up with them. Millions of dollars of advertising are spent annually on the benefits of drugs for the treatment of headaches. And we have bought into this carefully contrived thinking.
So let’s look at this "headache thing" from a different perspective.
The word "Headache" simply means - ache in the head. It is NOT a disease. It is simply an ache. A pain. A symptom. I am not even remotely making light of it though - this symptom can be severe and debilitating. It is said that there are different types of headaches; migraines, cluster, tension, occipital, sinus, etc. All of them seem to have a different pattern, location, severity, and, of course drug, to deal with it.
This may come as a surprise to many of you, but this is a manufacturer's reality. In other words, the pharmaceutical industry would like you to believe, and accept, the illusion that all of these headaches need to be treated. Why? Let’s see...There are billions of dollars of profit at stake. What a shock!
There seems to be no weight given to the idea that there might be a reason why a person might be experiencing headaches - no weight as to the "WHY".
Let’s look at this closer..
I mentioned that a headache is a symptom. It is simply your body literally "talking" back to you. We need to be able to interpret that language. Most people I meet are so busy treating their pain, they forget that it has a reason for being. A headache is a sign your body produces to let you know that it is having a difficult time handling something. The vast majority of headaches are found at the base of the head or in the region of the temples or over the eyes.
As a profession we have found that the vast majority of headaches are simply signs of a vertebral subluxation - a distortion of some of the vertebrae of the neck area mostly affecting the function of the nervous system. You would be surprised to learn that 85-95% of all subluxations I see in adults and children, can be traced to a difficult delivery. We call this Traumatic Birth Syndrome. Even an average, uncomplicated delivery can be traumatic for a child and can produce vertebral subluxations. Not a good thing!
These subluxations affect the manner in which the nervous system transmits information and can be very catastrophic. When this occurs, certain neck muscles are called into play to protect the nervous system from damage and you experience a "tension" headache. Very often, pain is transmitted to the face and people have been trained to think it is their sinuses at fault. They reach for sinus medication and the profit cascade begins. And then there is the temple, pounding pain - a migraine; again different drugs. And the headaches which come in clusters - cluster headaches; more drugs.
I am describing the vast majority of headaches. There are others, however, that are not caused by subluxations. These can be caused by diet and poor nutrition - hypoglycemia, for instance. I see many of these in my practice. Some are caused by an aneurysm, a disease process, toxicity, a tumor, etc. The point I am making is that no headaches should be taken lightly - it is always a sign that something is not OK.
If you or your child is experiencing headaches, a trip to our office should be a priority. we will be able to do a case history, comprehensive examination and x-rays (if needed) to determine the reason for your headaches.
If you would like more information, please contact us.
