Stressful situations can cause blood pressure to spike temporarily - hormones produced during a stressful situation cause your heart to beat faster, and your blood vessels to become narrow. Reacting to stress in an unhealthy way can increase the risk of high blood pressure, stroke, or heart attacks.
When you're in a stressful situation, it's important to keep healthy. Behaviours such as smoking, drinking in excess, and eating unhealthy foods are all linked to high blood pressure. Heart disease can also be linked to certain stress related conditions such as:
Depression
Anxiety
Loneliness
Although there is no evidence the above conditions are directly linked to high blood pressure, the hormones your body makes when you are stressed could lead to artery damage, and ultimately heart disease.
Increase in blood pressure during stressful situations can be very high - however your blood pressure returns to normal once the stress has gone away. It's important to try your best to keep stress to a minimum and although we know we can't eradicate stress caused my situations out of our control, we can control our reaction to stress.
Activities To Help Handle Stress & Reduce Blood Pressure
Knowing how to handle stressful situations can help you live a healthier lifestyle and not fall in to bad habits which could lead to long term high blood pressure. Here are just a few activities you could try:
Breathe & Relax: Close your eyes, sit in a comfortable position in a quiet room, and take deep breaths to help you relax.
Exercise: Exercise is a proven stress buster - find an exercise pattern which you can do depending on ability, ask your live-in carer to help or join in with you!
Meditation: You may want to look in to meditation as an everyday activity to help you relax and unwind either in the morning or in the evening.
Sleep: If you are sleep deprived or simply tired, problems may seem a lot worse than they really are. Have a rest and revisit the issue on hand - you're likely to see it in a different light, or even find a solution.
Change Your Perspective: Is there something you can do to help solve the problem? Then try and resolve it. If there isn't and the situation is out of your control, acknowledge your feelings and move on to something more positive!
Find what works for you - try different things and keep activities which help make you feel good, releasing those endorphins which make you feel great.
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