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Do You Know What Really Causes High Blood Pressure?
By Stephen Josephs

According to research, in approximately 90 TO 95 percent of high blood pressure cases, the cause is unknown. In fact, you can have high blood pressure for years without knowing it. However, consider the facts, it has been stated in reports that a poor diet and diets high in sodium are also known to be causes of high blood pressure.

Salt and High Blood Pressure: According to the American heart association a healthy adult should consume less than 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day. This is about 1 teaspoon of sodium chloride (salt) PER DAY NOT PER MEAL.
1/4 teaspoon of salt contains 575 mg sodium
1/2 teaspoon of salt contains 1,150 mg sodium
3/4 teaspoon of salt contains 1,725 mg sodium
1 teaspoon of salt contains 2,300 mg sodium

Determining and then limiting how much salt you personally intake daily is really quite simple. Start by reading all your food labels. You will be shocked at how much sodium some common products contain. Fast food is a good example of what to look out for. The average fast food burger contains over 1000mg of sodium and if you get the fries add another 800mg plus. One average fast food meal equals nearly your entire recommended daily maximum intake of sodium, not to mention all the calories and fat usually comprised from the poorest quality foods known to man.
Now that you know some of the most common causes, what can you do to help lower your risks of acquiring high blood pressure? Your first step should be to clearly understand the causes and eliminate them, look through your kitchen cabinets and make a list of all the products you consume frequently and log how much sodium each one has. Simply identify the products that contain the highest amounts and substitute alternate choices in their place.

Known causes: There are few cases which the cause of high blood pressure is known, these cases are referred to as secondary hypertension, and include:

Cause 1- Kidney abnormality and a number of kidney diseases

Cause 2- Structural abnormality of the aorta, existing since birth

Cause 3- Narrowing of certain arteries.

Salt and High Blood Pressure

Conclusion: The best control and prevention is to follow a healthy diet, reduce the amount of salt in your diet, maintain a healthy weight, stay physically active, limit alcohol and quit smoking.

http://www.netbrez.com/high-blood-pressure Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stephen_Josephs

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Back Pain Management Tips

Keep Doing Your Exercises For Back Pain Management
By Richard Collins

Not doing any form of exercise at all can be the cause that your back pain gets worse after some time, with the right type of exercises you can prevent this from happening. Most of these you can do in the comfort of your own home. Always know the limits of your own body and never push it harder then it can take. When you start with these exercises for back pain management do it slow and only start the next, more strenuous, step when you feel comfortable with the present ones.

Examples of exercises

You need to start out slow and very basic, this could mean just lying on your back and make some slow movements with your ankles. Just start to do this about 10 times for each foot. When you are feeling up to it you can increase the exercise by doing some knee bending, leaving your foot on the floor. Never bend your knee further than possible and always make sure you straighten it out again, do this ten times for each leg.

For some exercise you will need a wall you can use as a support, like this next one were you need to stand about a foot away from the wall and leaning against it with your back. Slowly start to bend your knees until they are at an 45 degree angle then start standing back up again in a very slow fashion. This should also be repeated for about ten times. Now turn around and face the wall but keep the distance of a foot between you and the wall. Start to slowly rise up on your toes and try to get your heels of the floor as high as you possibly can of course you can use a hand on the wall to keep your balance. These are just some starter exercises and you should try them out for a couple of days before progressing towards the more advances stuff. Remember, listen to your body.

More advanced examples

When you have done the above mentioned exercises for a couple of days and you think you are ready for it you can try some of the more advanced exercises. These can help to ease your back pain. We need to strengthen the muscles that most of the time are causing the pain, often this is done by doing lumbar balancing and hamstring stretches.

An exercise that incorporates this would be the following, lie on your back and bent you knees, lift just one leg and use your hands to hold it up in the air. Now straighten you knee in a slow manner so that your leg is in a straight position, then return your leg to the floor in the bend positions. You should do this exercise with each leg and this should be done ten times. This all helps in strengthening those lumbar muscles and extending those hamstrings.

Before you do any of the mentioned or other exercises, always consult your doctor before doing anything that strains your back when you are suffering from back pain. And, as said before, listen to your body while doing any exercise for back pain management, when it tells you to stop, do it. Start with 5 times and build it up from there.