Doctor And Life Saving Advice

Documents Tagged ‘Doctor Advice’

If your doctor measures your blood pressure and it is consistently high, they will also want to do a few extra tests. Tests include using a dipstick to cheek a sample of urine for the presence of protein (which would indicate kidney damage) or glucose (which would indicate diabetes) as well as taking a blood sample to send to a laboratory to assess your kidneys’ function. Your doctor may also examine the back of your eye using an ophthalmoscope as high blood pressure can cause damage to the light- sensitive layer of the retina. Other tests can be done to check for any underlying disorder and include a chest X-ray and electrocardiogram (ECG).

TREATMENT OPTIONS

The first line of treatment is not medication. Your doctor will recommend lifestyle changes to reduce high blood pressure. These changes include losing weight if overweight, reducing alcohol intake, cutting down salt consumption, taking regular exercise and, most importantly, giving up smoking. Read the rest of this entry »

Our lives seem to become increasingly stressful. We work harder than ever and our personal lives have become more complex. Family and community support systems are often not so readily available. So, stress is a major factor in most people’s lives. Some stress may be beneficial: many people need a certain level of stress to perform at their best. It is when stress becomes excessive and unmanageable, with no apparent resolution, that problems start to arise. This is why it is very important to be able to recognize stress and know how to manage it.

It is usually possible to recognize when levels of stress become unmanageably. high. Stress tends to manifest itself in either psychological or physical symptoms, but sometimes as both. Read the rest of this entry »

Normally, waste products from the body pass out ill urine, which is produced in the kidneys. If the urine becomes saturated with waste chemicals, these can crystallize and form stone-like deposits in the kidneys. Kidney stones come in varying sizes: small ones may travel down the urinary tract and simply pass out in the urine; larger stones tend to stay within the kidney but can move into the ureter, where they can lodge and cause severe pain.

Half of all people affected by kidney stones will develop further stones within seven years. Kidney stones occur more frequently in young to middle-aged men. People living in a hot climate have a higher chance of developing kidney stones if they don’t drink enough fluid to replace that lost through sweating. Some individuals may inherit a predisposition towards the condition. Read the rest of this entry »

Persistently high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, can damage arteries and body organs, including the kidneys and the heart. This insidious disease is a major factor for heart disease, heart attacks and strokes. In fact, high blood pressure increases the risk of stroke six times and the risk of a heart attack threefold. Health education and screening program aid the early detection of high blood pressure and, together with improved treatments, have helped to significantly reduce the incidence of strokes and heart attacks

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