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5 Ways to Lower Your Blood Pressure

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Heather M. Graham on Jan 29, 2009 at 3:14PM

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The Heart of the Matter

Blood pressure measures the force of blood against your artery walls. When it’s consistently high, it can weaken your blood vessels and significantly increase your risk of heart attack, stroke and kidney failure.

“It’s called the silent killer,” says Cleaves Bennett, M.D., a retired professor of medicine at UCLA and the author of In 12 Weeks You Can Control Your High Blood Pressure Without Drugs. Even though you don’t feel it, “what’s happening when your blood pressure is up is the tiny little arteries that feed your tissue close off, first by the thousands and then by the millions, so all parts of your body are losing blood supply.”

Filed Under:
- high blood pressure,
- hypertension

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